


i never knew you could hold moonlight in your hands ‘til the night i held you

by bechloehuh, eliseboobman (bechloehuh)



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, beca is a dj, chloe is a vet, there's pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-06 15:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 29,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12213648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/bechloehuh, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bechloehuh/pseuds/eliseboobman
Summary: She knows that she’s waiting for the sunset when it’s already night, but Chloe’s something even her dreams can’t make up, and for the first time in her life, she’s sure as hell not about to let these feelings pass just because she’s a little scared about what might happen.Except, maybe letting the feelings pass is for the best. Because the next morning she makes the mistake of looking Chloe up on Facebook.In a relationship with Chicago Walp.





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a post @brittany-snodes made on tumblr so credit goes to Brittany for the idea. You can find the post here: http://brittany-snodes.tumblr.com/post/162230286690

Beca likes to think she’s a tidy person.

She cleans up after herself, she washes her dishes, dusts the shelves – the ones she can actually reach – on a regular basis, and  _ even _ cleans the toilet.

When she moves in with a girl she found on Craigslist named Fat Amy, Beca’s not surprised to find that Amy is the complete opposite. It’s kind of her own stupid fault for looking for a roommate on Craigslist in the first place, but she was desperate to move out from the small house she and her dad and his wife lived in back in Cincinnati, and moving to New York last minute seemed like a good idea.

Amy leaves clothes all over the apartment – some even manage to make it into Beca’s room somehow – and there are more beer bottles on the kitchen counters than Beca can even count.

“You have a serious problem,” she tells Amy when she wakes up one day to find 20 bottles of PBR littering every surface in the kitchen they share.

Amy argues that she didn’t drink  _ all  _ of them, just half, but Beca thinks that it’s still ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as drinking PBR in the first place.

For the most part though, Amy’s a good roommate. As good as a stranger in a huge, scary city like New York can get. She doesn’t force Beca to go to sleep at 9PM like her roommate in college did, and she doesn’t insist on hosting parties every weekend. If Amy wants a party, there’s always a ninety five percent chance that she already knows somebody who’s holding one, _ or _ she gives Beca a week’s notice, leaving Beca to decide whether she wants to take part or not.

(Half of the time she does partake simply because she has nowhere else to go.)

It freaks Beca out, how many friends Amy has. Beca has three. Her roommate, her father, and her landlord.

Amy is messy and she sometimes –  _ always _ – makes Beca bring her Sub sandwiches home, but she’s Beca’s friend and the only one who knows about Beca’s bookmark collection, and she buys Thai food on Friday nights and takes good photos of Beca so she can put them on Instagram to show her sixty followers (which she’s pretty sure are mostly just bots and the occasional family member.)

Over the next 2 years, Beca starts to get used to cleaning up after Amy, and she’d even say that Amy is her best friend.

It’s a rainy Tuesday in January when Amy comes home with a cat. A ginger Maine Coon, she claims it is, but Beca’s pretty sure it’s just a regular tabby.

And she’s surprised, to say the least. Out of all the pets she’d imagine Amy bringing home, a cat wasn’t one of them. An alligator maybe, or a koala bear illegally transported from Australia, or even a full-grown Bengal tiger, but not a domestic cat. Amy names him Kenneth Parcell – “he’s the best character on 30 Rock!” she argues, “and he’s  _ ginger! _ ” – which Beca thinks is totally unfair to the poor thing, and she downright refuses to say the full name out loud.

Plus, Kenneth from 30 rock has blonde hair, so Beca questions whether Amy actually knows what she’s talking about.

(Most of the time  _ no _ , she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and neither does Beca.)

Beca calls him Ken for short, which eventually sticks after a few weeks.

It’s when Amy is at work when Ken starts to choke on something, and Beca’s glad that she had taken a break from mixing because she’s not sure if she’d ever forgive herself if she let Ken die while she was home. After all, she is practically his second mom, so she guesses not letting him die is the least she can do to be considered a good parent.

She drops the sandwich she had just sat down to eat onto her plate, and she runs over to where he’s sitting on top of his tower – his castle, Amy calls it – and she’s not quite sure what to do. She knows that there’s a vet somewhere near her apartment because Amy had taken him before she brought him home to get his shots, but she’s not quite sure where it is, and she’s not quite sure if he even needs medical attention. She’s not really an expert on animals. If she was, she wouldn’t be a mediocre DJ at parties and social events that she’d never dream of attending, and she certainly wouldn’t have applied for that part-time job at Subway a year ago when she realized she can’t rely on her father to fund her rent for her whole life.

She realizes that she can’t just leave him, even if he  _ has _ stopped choking for now, so she grabs her keys, wraps him in a blanket from Amy’s bed and takes him to the vet.

He pukes in the car, which Beca almost gets mad at. Almost. She and Amy had cleaned it recently so she’s not happy that she’ll have to clean it again, but she also doesn’t want this tiny animal to die in her car so she strokes him for a minute with the hand she’s not using to drive, and she tries her best to calm him down by talking to him.

He hisses at her so she frowns, hisses back, and turns the radio on.

She tells him about the mix she’s making for the party she’s DJing at on Friday. She’s trying to get Young Blood by  _ The Naked And Famous _ and Make Your Way by  _ EMBRZ _ to fit together, which is much harder than she’d expected. She usually doesn’t have a problem mixing songs together that have different beats, but she can’t for the life of her get the choruses of the two songs to fit.

She just needs a little push. From what, she’s not exactly sure.

She asks him how he’s doing and he meows, and only then does she realize how absolutely ridiculous she probably looks right now, talking to a God damn cat as if he understands her.

When she arrives at the vet, after being directed by the GPS on her phone, she shoots a text to Amy telling her that she’s taking Ken to the veterinary hospital because he’s been choking and puking, but not to worry because he’ll be fine. He’s breathing so that’s good, right?

Who knew co-owning a cat would be so stressful? So stressful that she gets out of the car and almost leaves him on the passenger seat.

With a sigh, she gets him out of the seat and locks the car behind her, petting him on the head and telling him not to worry, everything will be okay, and she’s sorry for almost forgetting why she’s here in the first place.

She counts it as a victory when she manages to dodge his claws as he tries to scratch her for  _ ever _ thinking that she’s worthy of petting him.

The woman in the office is kind, and she asks Beca questions about the cat. What his name is, how old he is, what’s wrong with him, and other stuff that Beca has to text Amy for. Eventually she calls her and lets her talk to the receptionist, trying not to roll her eyes when Amy asks, frantically, if Kenneth Parcell is going to die.

She takes a seat with Ken in her lap, pulling her phone out and checking social media to pass the time. Another mass shooting in one place, and another terrorist attack in another, and surprise surprise, Trump is being a shady asshole again. A model fell over on the runway though, so of course that’s trending on Twitter.

Before she gets too immersed in the article she found about San Francisco Pride, she hears somebody shout  _ Kenneth Parcell! _ into the waiting room, and she immediately sighs, locking her phone.

The woman sat opposite her with a Great Dane in front of her legs gives her a strange look, and she smiles, faking politeness, telling her that it’s not her cat.

She follows the nurse – she thinks they’re called nurses – into one of the rooms, complying when the woman tells her to put Kenneth Parcell onto the table in front of them.

“You can call him Ken,” Beca says, putting him down gently. “Just Ken.”

“Sorry,” she says with a laugh, “It’s just a funny name. I like it.”

Beca tears her eyes away from Ken for the first time, and only then does she notice exactly how beautiful the doctor standing in front of her is. She doesn’t really linger on that thought though, because she’s come here for one reason and one reason only. To make sure Kenneth Pa–to make sure  _ Ken _ is okay.

“It’s a stupid name,” she murmurs, watching as the doctor puts a pair of plastic gloves on.

“It’s unique,” the woman says, walking over to the table. “You’re Beca, right?”

“Yep. One C.”

She nods. “I’m Dr. Chloe Beale. Also one C. What seems to be the problem?”

Beca looks at the badges Chloe has on her shirt.

A yellow one that says “Pigeons are people too.”

A white one that says “My ferret beat up your honor student.”

A patterned one that says “Have you hugged a python today?”

_ Oh my God _ , Beca thinks.  _ This girl is a complete dork. _

She looks down at Ken, surprised he’s managed to stay quiet for this long, and then back up at Chloe. Her eyes are so blue that Beca’s not sure she’s a real person. Do people have eyes that blue in real life? Surely they don’t. Surely she’s dreaming.

“He started choking at home,” she says, subtly pinching her arm.  _ Not _ dreaming. “Then he threw up a bit in the car on the way here.”

“How many times has he thrown up?”

“Just once.”

“Does he throw up a lot?”

“Uh, no, this is the first time I think.”

“And did it look unusual at all? Any blood in it?”

Beca shakes her head. “Nope. Just gave my car a nice atmospheric scent. Odeur du puke.”

Chloe nods with a quiet giggle, and the sound of it almost causes Beca’s heart to stop, because not only is this woman beautiful, but she also has the cutest laugh known to man, and Beca’s not sure she’s worthy of being in the same room as her.

She watches as Chloe starts to touch Ken in loads of different places that Beca thinks is unnecessary, but she just lets her do her thing because clearly she’s the professional here. Beca just wants this to be over so she can go back home and finish her sandwich, and maybe stop thinking about how nice it would be to hear Chloe laugh again.

“We’ll have to do some tests just to be safe,” Chloe says after checking Ken’s heartbeat, “But if I were to guess, the vomiting was due to motion sickness in the car on the way here. When did he last eat?”

Beca thinks back to when he had started to choke. She’d just fed him.  _ Awesome _ . He probably just choked on a piece of fish, and now Beca looks stupid because she’s brought him all the way here and took up this veterinarian’s time for no reason.

“He had some tuna about an hour before I brought him here.” He had his dinner ten minutes before she brought him here, but Beca’s always been known for stretching the truth a little.

Chloe nods. “That’s fine. The choking might have been because of his food too but we’ll test him just in case. Cats tend to choke on small things like their toys, food, pen lids, and stuff like that. He won’t let me open his mouth though, so we’ll give him an x-ray to see if there’s anything lodged in his throat.”

Beca nods, watching as Chloe so casually strokes Ken’s back as she talks, scratching his neck and his head before looking down at him and cooing.

It took Beca at least a month to be able to  _ look _ at him without him scratching her eyes out.

“He likes you,” Beca says, leaning on the narrow table.

In any other world, this would look smooth. Beca would be cool and collected and Chloe would swoon at her feet and she’d leave with Chloe’s number. But in this world, Beca is an idiot, and she misjudges the lightness of the table, and it starts to topple over just as she puts her whole weight on it.

Luckily Chloe catches it, one hand holding onto Ken in case he slips off.

“Shit,” Beca blurts out, finding her footing and taking a step back, helping Chloe put the table back where it was. “S–So sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine, it happens way more often than you’d think,” Chloe says with a laugh, and even though Beca wants the ground to open up and swallow her whole, she’s glad she got to hear Chloe laugh again.

Focus.

She can practically feel Ken rolling his eyes at her over how she’s being – a useless lesbian, Amy would say – which she doesn’t appreciate. She knows he knows what’s going on, because when the cute blonde delivery girl came again last week, Beca had complimented her hair without thinking, and Ken scratched her ankle as if he knew exactly what she was trying to do, causing her to yell out that he’s an asshole.

The delivery girl had laughed – and  _ God _ , it was a beautiful laugh – but Beca knew that she’d made a fool of herself and the girl now probably thinks she’s deranged. It always happens in front of pretty girls, and Beca always ends up blaming Ken for it.

Maybe it’s just how she is as a person.

Chloe tells her she’ll be right back and Beca smiles before looking over at Ken, and only then does she realize she’s still smiling.

“Shut up,” she mumbles, straightening her face.

//

Ken, it turns out, is totally fine.

There was nothing stuck in his throat, and all the tests showed that he was a very happy and healthy cat. Beca made sure to call Amy and tell her that he’s okay, and even though she thought it was kind of stupid, she complied when Amy asked her to put Ken on the phone so she could talk to him. Beca never really pictured Amy getting so attached to something, let alone a cat, but she thinks it’s sweet. And she can admit, she is relieved to find out that he’s okay.

That still doesn’t stop her from organizing another check up in a few weeks though, just to be safe.

“That’s perfectly fine if you want to do that,” Chloe says, “you can never be too careful. How’s 12 noon, February fifth?”

“Perfect.”

She bids farewell to Chloe, holding up Ken’s paw and waving at her, before realizing how dumb she probably looks. She turns around and walks out of the door, and in any other world that would be it. But once again, in this world Beca is a huge idiot, and it’s one of those doors that shuts slowly, and Chloe tells her that it’ll close by itself, but Beca has already committed to shutting the door manually, so she waves one last time before pulling the door forcefully and rolling her eyes at herself.

“Don’t say a word,” she says to Ken, who is still wrapped in a blanket with a brand new toy mouse that Chloe persuaded her into buying.

It’s totally normal that Beca finishes her mix that night with the image of ginger hair and bright blue eyes on her mind.

//

It doesn’t surprise her when Amy makes more of a fuss with Ken than she usually does. She buys him softer food and more toys to play with, and even a brand new cat tower that Beca’s pretty sure is bigger than the refrigerator. She swears she hears Amy singing On the Good Ship Lollipop to Ken one night, but she’s too busy getting ready for her gig to dwell on how weird it is.

When Beca walks into the empty club she’s playing at to hear Justin Bieber playing over the speakers, she rolls her eyes, praying that this isn’t somebody’s sweet 16 again.

The owner of the club – his name is Tom and he does _ not _ look old enough to own a club – ushers her over to the bar, welcoming her and asking her if she wants a drink.

“Wait, you  _ are _ old enough to drink, right? Do you have ID?”

“Dude. Do I  _ really _ look that young?”

He smiles at her and tells her he’s kidding, and she asks for a beer with a well-mannered smile as she puts her laptop bag on the floor next to her and sits down on a stool, leaning her elbows on the bar.

“Is Bud okay?” he asks. Beca would have preferred Corona, but at least it’s not PBR. She nods her head, looking around at the empty room. “If you’re looking for the DJ booth, it’s over there.”

He points to a table in the corner of the room on a small stage barely big enough to fit four people on it.

She sighs. “Please tell me you’re kidding.” She turns to look at him, visibly relaxing when she sees his smug smile.

“My boys are bringing the speakers and decks out, don’t worry.”

“Your boys,” Beca repeats, smirking. She can tell this is going to be an interesting night.

//

Tom is about to hit on Beca for the third time that night when he catches her staring at someone at the bar from where she’s playing a new Calvin Harris and Katy Perry song that somebody had suggested earlier. He mentions it to her and she yells over the music that she’s not staring at anybody, and he tells her that she can have a 10 minute break if she needs, while winking suggestively.

“If I get another break, I’ll need way more than 10 minutes,” she yells over the music, and his eyes widen in understanding.

“You’re ambitious,” he says, and she smiles, shaking her head.

“I’m not staring at anyone,” she repeats.

She was staring at a tall blonde girl at the bar.

After finding out that it wasn’t actually a sweet 16, and the Justin Bieber music playing when she walked in was just filler music until the party started, Beca loosened up a bit. Tom, it turns out, is a huge fan of her music after she had played at a beach party he attended a few months back. She doesn’t remember him but she remembers which party he’s talking about.

She perfectly transitions a remix of Surfin’ by  _ Kid Cudi _ into Young, Dumb & Broke by  _ Khalid _ , getting a huge roar from the crowd, and she can’t stop the grin on her face from getting wider. It feels amazing, having people respond to her mixes like this.

The party that Tom had attended was one of Beca’s favorites. She was on fire that day, having the crowd going wild, every single one of them dancing along to  _ her _ music. It was the first time she’d included her own voice and compositions in her mixes. She didn’t know if it would go well – maybe people would think she couldn’t sing – but even she can admit that the mixes were amazing, and it seemed that everybody else loved them just as much as she did.

Tom comes back ten minutes later with a beer, and she should turn it down because she’s already had a few and they’re starting to get to her, but drinking water on a night like this just doesn’t seem right.

“Thanks,” she has to yell over the music, and Tom nods as he stands next to her with his own beer and looks out at the dance floor.

“You’re working wonders,” he says, to which she has to ask him to repeat because the music is way too loud and it doesn’t help that the speakers are right beside her head. He repeats himself louder, and she smiles. Of course she’s working wonders. It’s her job to.

The blonde girl is still sat at the bar, and Beca’s not sure why nobody has approached her yet. She’s beautiful, from what Beca can see – which admittedly isn’t much because her eyes are starting to blur with alcohol and adrenaline – but she knows what people at bars are like. What  _ men _ at bars are like.

Tom moves closer to her and tells her that she’s a great DJ, putting his arm around her waist.

Exhibit A.

“Once again, I’m not interested,” she shouts over the music, lifting her hand from where it’s resting on one of the DJ decks and bringing it up to his arm so she can remove it.

“Why not?” he asks with his, admittedly, charming smile, and Beca looks back out at the crowd.

“I’m not interested!” she repeats, face more stoic and less playful.

He steps back a little and smiles, putting both hands up, even though he has a beer bottle in one of them and her heart almost stops. She’ll kill him if he spills one drop of his beer on her laptop.

“My bad,” he says, and she watches him lower his hands. “I didn’t mean to push!”

She hesitates but eventually she smiles at him and he smiles back. He’s nice, she’ll give him that. Not often does she expect to be treated with respect at a club like this, much less by the owner of the club who insists that Budweiser is the best beer and calls his employees his “boys.”

She likes him though, she decides. He’s the only man she’s ever come across who actually took no for an answer when she told him she wasn’t interested. The only man who has never immediately replied with “give me a chance” or “come on, I’m a great guy.” Sure, it took him a couple tries, but he backed down, and that’s more than she can say about every other guy who has hit on her while she’s performed at a club.

She gets his number at the end of the night – about 3AM – when everybody is finally piling out of the club. Tom had asked her to announce an hour ago that last orders are being taken at the bar, so if anybody wants anything they had to order it then. But even though it’s three in the morning and the bar is closed, it doesn’t stop Tom from offering Beca another beer after she’s packed her stuff up. She declines with a polite shake of her head, and she knows she’s drunk because the motion knocks her off balance and her eyes feel heavy and Tom is laughing at her as she almost drops her laptop bag.

“Shut up,” she says, as the employees are cleaning up around her. “You got me drunk, you can’t laugh at me.”

“Hey,  _ you _ drank  _ me _ clean, Mitchell,” he laughs. “You owe me at least a hundred dollars’ worth of beer.”

She tells him to shove it, and he laughs as he hands her a glass of water that she hadn’t realized he had poured out for her. She drinks it though, not realizing how thirsty she actually is, and Tom watches her the whole time.

“You need me to call you a cab?” he asks, all humor gone. He sounds worried, which eases her brain a little bit.

Beca shakes her head.

“I’m perfectly cable of calling my own cab.”

“Cable?” he asks. She squints. “Alright, I’m calling you a cab.”

Tom calls her a cab and waits with her outside the club doors until it shows up. It’s unnecessary, she tells him, but he insists, telling her that he can’t leave a tipsy  _ lady _ outside on her own without knowing if she’s safe or not.

“It’s not a  _ thing _ ,” he says, sitting beside her on the step, lighting a cigarette. “I’m not trying to hit on you,” he offers it to her and she declines with a wave of her hand. “I’m just making sure you get home safe, from one decent human being to another.”

She smiles and tells him she’s not a lady.

//

Beca wakes up the next morning with the worst hangover known to man.

Amy is offended because “What? Beca! You’ve never woken up with a bad hangover after one of  _ my _ parties! What the hell?”

Only Amy would be mad at her for having a bad hangover.

“Way too much yelling,” she says, walking over to the kitchen, running a hand through her hair. Ken is on the counter, and Beca sighs. “ _ Amy _ .”

“I didn’t do it. What?”

“Why is Ken on the counter? You  _ know _ how much he sheds. I’d rather not have cat hair in my breakfast again.”

When Amy replies that being on the counter makes him feel powerful, Beca just rolls her eyes. She has nothing to say to that.

She pulls a bowl out of one of the higher cupboards, snapping a no at Amy when she asks her if she needs her to reach it for her. She decides on Lucky Charms, even if she disagrees with exactly how much sugar is in them, and she puts way too much milk in the bowl but she doesn’t care.

“I want to die,” she murmurs, sitting down at the kitchen table.

“Hey now.” Amy says. Beca has to resist the urge to start singing Don’t Dream It’s Over. “Don’t say that, Ken almost died the other day, have some respect for his feelings.”

“He’s a cat. And he didn’t almost  _ die _ , he choked on tuna.”

“That’s our  _ son _ !” Amy yells, reaching over to pet his head, flinching when he turns to scratch her hand. She looks down at him and scowls, and Beca shakes her head before going back to eating her cereal.

She has Crowded House stuck in her head for the rest of the day.

//

Beca forgets about Ken’s appointment at the vet in February.

It’s not until Amy asks her one Thursday morning if she can take him this afternoon that she even remembers that animals need frequent check-ups too.

“Why can’t you take him?” she asks. She really wants to finish her Dexter rewatch today.

Amy tells her that she has a gig at a Doctor Who café today – which Beca didn’t even think was a  _ thing _ – and she won’t be back in time to take him.

“Who are you being today?” Beca asks, taking her empty plate into the kitchen.

“Fat Amy Pond.”

“Oh, I loved her,” Beca says. Amy tells her she has no idea who she is, but the café has provided her with Doctor Who parodies of 90s pop hits, and Beca’s not surprised Amy took the job. An offer like that literally comes around once in a lifetime.

Ken’s appointment is at twelve, so Beca sets off to the vet at 11:35. She can’t remember exactly how long it takes to get there due to the stress of last time, but according to google maps it only takes fifteen minutes in the car including traffic.

There’s a man behind the desk this time, much grumpier than the woman that was there last month. He laughs at Ken’s real name, and even though Beca hates it too, she scowls at him because nobody makes fun of her and Amy’s son except her.

When Chloe comes out with a clipboard in her hand, shouting Ken’s name, looking as beautiful as the first time they met last month, Beca has to take a breath. She’d forgotten about Chloe. With gigs weekend after weekend – even day after day on a few occasions – and always being busy making mixes or tagging along with Amy to whatever activity she has planned, Beca had simply forgotten about her. Even more so, she’d forgotten how  _ pretty _ Chloe Beale is.

The first thing she notices is how Chloe is wearing glasses today.

The second thing she notices is her new badge.

**_‘I’m not confused.’_ **

Huh. Whatever that means – and Beca doesn’t have a clue, but the colors on the badge sort of give it away – it kind of makes her smile, makes her feel  _ good _ that Chloe has a growing collection of pins. Maybe Beca shouldn’t feel as embarrassed about her bookmark collection now.

She takes Ken into the same room as last time, putting him down on the table and greeting Chloe with a smile and a polite, “nice to see you again.”

“Good to see you, Beca with one C,” Chloe says, before looking down at Ken. “And you, Mr Parcell. How are you doing?”

He meows, and Beca doesn’t have it in her to be shocked. She wouldn’t be surprised if Chloe could talk to animals Dr. Dolittle style. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to her.

“Beca?”

Beca snaps out of her trance, looking up at Chloe. “Hmm?”

“How has he been?” Chloe repeats.

_ Oh _ . Beca tells her that he’s been fine. No choking or throwing up, and no signs of anything being wrong with him, other than the fact that he still scratches Beca every now and again, even when she’s sat watching TV minding her own business.

“That’s good,” Chloe says, holding her stethoscope to his stomach. “Not good that he scratches you but it’s… it’s good that he’s good.”

Beca can’t help but smile at Chloe’s rambling. It’s awkward. Especially when all Beca can think to say is “right,” and she’s thankful when Chloe only smiles at her for a few seconds before she starts to busy herself with examining Ken.

She runs through a quick checkup, telling Beca what she’s doing and telling her if she finds anything strange. She doesn’t, thankfully, and before Beca knows it, the examination is over, and Chloe is asking her if there’s anything else she needs.

Beca looks down at Ken, back up at Chloe, and then down to her new badge.

“You’re not confused?” she asks, and Chloe’s eyebrows knit together.

“Sorry?”

“Your badge,” Beca says, nodding towards Chloe’s shirt. Chloe seems to catch on then,  _ ohh _ -ing and nodding her head.

“It’s um,” she clears her throat. “Y’know, it’s just a badge.”

Beca knows the colors in the background. Pink, purple, and blue. She’s seen the flag enough times on Tumblr and Twitter. She can’t just point out the fact that Chloe might or might not be bisexual though. It’s just weird. It’s a weird thing to do, right? People don’t do that kind of stuff in real life. At least, Beca thinks they don’t. And if they do, it’s pretty rude of them.

“I like it,” she says, instead of making a fool out of herself by pushing. “It’s… evocative. In a good way.”

Chloe smiles, blinking as she looks down at the ground, and then over at Ken, who meows and scratches Beca when she reaches out to stroke him.

“I see you’re the least favorite parent,” Chloe says, and Beca laughs, trying not to wince at the scratch on her arm.

“He fucking hates me.”

Hearing Chloe laugh lights Beca’s face up for some ungodly reason, and she doesn’t even realize she’s grinning until she watches a blush creep up on Chloe’s face.

She realizes that they don’t really have anything else to talk about, so she reaches over to pick Ken up and tells Chloe that she better be going. Chloe nods and tells her she’ll meet her at the reception, and Beca doesn’t look at her as she walks out of the room.

To say Beca is shocked when Chloe writes her number down onto a paw shapes post-it note is an understatement. Surely this isn’t professional, giving somebody your number at work. Especially somebody like Beca, who has been nothing but awkward on both occasions when they’ve met.

“For any emergencies,” Chloe says, when Beca reluctantly takes the post-it. Of course. “Call that number if anything is wrong. With Ken,” she clarifies. “Or just bring him in, whatever is easier.”

“Right,” Beca says, looking down at the handwriting. It suits Chloe. The quick scribble of a cat that she guesses is Ken in the corner makes her smile too.

She leaves with a healthy cat and a pretty girl’s phone number, and she doesn’t make a fool of herself by trying to force the door of the vet shut this time, which she thinks is a bonus.

//

She manages to mix Please Mr. Postman with Feel It Still by  _ Portugal. The Man _ , before she calls it a night and shuts her laptop off. She switches the TV on to see that Spiderman is on, so she settles with that, not wanting to spend hours flicking through the channels to find something to watch, and gets comfy on the couch, scrolling through her phone at the same time to see if she has any important emails.

(Okay, she checks her twitter to see if anybody has retweeted any of the mixes she’s linked, but of course, the only notifications she has are quoted tweets from her father, boasting about how talented his daughter is to his six followers.)

When Ken starts to meow, Beca gets up and feeds him. It’s a little early compared to his usual feeding time, but she figures there’s no harm. She’ll most likely be asleep on the sofa in an hour anyway, so she doesn’t want to leave him to starve.

When he starts to meow after his dinner though, Beca figures that she won’t be getting to sleep any time soon. No matter how boring Spiderman is.

“Please be quiet,” she says, adjusting her position on the sofa. “It’s disrespectful to talk over Gwen Stacy’s graduation speech, did you know.”

All she gets is a meow back at her.

It goes on for at least another hour, long after Spiderman is over, before Beca gets up and walks over to where he’s sitting on top of his tower.

“What? What do you want?”

Meow.

“Dude, you’ve had food. You have your toys, you have water, and your litterbox is clean. Your life is better than mine at this point,  _ please _ stop meowing.”

Again, a meow.

He looks up at her with, ironically, the biggest puppy eyes Beca has seen, and she sighs as she holds out her arm for him. It’s rare that this happens, but sometimes when Ken needs attention, he’ll climb up Beca’s arm and sit on her shoulder, and he won’t budge until Beca plays him some of her mixes. She finds it weird. Really weird. And of course, Amy doesn’t believe that he wants to hear Beca’s music.

“He’s a cat,” she usually argues. “He doesn’t want to hear your mixes, he wants to hunt mice and birds like the true killer he is.”

“He’s harmless,” Beca will say, just as Ken will scratch her arm.

But as she expected, Ken climbs up her arm, claws digging into her skin, until he’s sitting on her shoulder.

“You’re a real asshole, you know,” Beca says to him, rubbing at the scratches. He doesn’t care.

She starts to suspect something weird when he meows non-stop throughout the mix she plays for him. With a sigh, she looks at the time in the corner of her laptop screen.  **8:13PM.** She thinks it over. It could be an emergency, and Chloe did tell her to call her if she ever thought something was wrong with Ken.

It takes her another ten minutes listening to Ken meowing to work up the courage to call Chloe.

Chloe answers with a friendly “Hello?” on the third ring, and Beca finds it weird that she missed her voice.

“Hi, it’s me. Beca.”

“Beca with one C, hi.” Beca smiles. “Is Ken okay?”

It’s nice that she seems concerned. It’s also nice that she remembers who Beca and Ken are.

“I don’t know,” Beca says, turning her head to look up at Ken, who is now suspiciously quiet as he watches from her shoulder. “He won’t stop meowing. Like, it’s  _ non _ -stop.”

She hears Chloe laugh. “How long has he been doing it?”

“Um, about three hours?” Again, with the truth stretching.

“Right. Has he been eating?”

“He,” Beca pauses, stretching her head to look over at his empty bowl. “Yeah, I fed him not long ago.”

“And his litterbox is clean?”

“Yep.”

“Hmm.” Beca can hear typing on the other end of the phone. “One second.”

“Dude, are you  _ googling _ why he’s meowing?”

A pause.

“I… I need to see if there’s anything that could be wrong with him.”

Beca smiles at how innocent Chloe sounds.

“Right.”

When Chloe tells her that excess meowing could be because of an overactive thyroid or kidney disease, and says that she better bring him in first thing tomorrow, Beca nods.

“Right,” she repeats. “What time?”

“How’s nine for you?”

Way too early.

“That’s fine. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

//

For the third time in less than 2 months, Chloe comes back into the veterinary room to tell Beca that Ken is perfectly healthy.

She’s humming Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours) by  _ Stevie Wonder _ – Beca knows that song anywhere, it’s her father’s favorite – when she comes into the room, and it takes Beca by surprise for a second, before she eventually responds.

“Are you sure?” Beca asks, trying not to think about how beautiful Chloe’s humming voice sounds. She hadn’t really expected anything to be wrong with Ken and okay, she’s definitely glad that there’s nothing wrong with him, but she can’t be  _ this _ paranoid can she? Surely he was meowing over  _ something _ .

“Positive,” Chloe tells her. “He’s perfectly fine. He probably just needed attention, didn’t you?” she scratches him under the mouth, leaning over to coo at him like she did on their first visit here. He purrs at her and it makes Beca smile; she loves how natural Chloe is with him.

Beca notices Chloe hasn’t got any new badges on today.

Then she realizes that she only saw her yesterday, and it’s kind of worrying that it feels like it’s been months.

So much that she nods, picks Ken up, and tells Chloe that she has to go.

//

Tom calls her that Friday asking her if she’s able to perform a last minute gig at his club that night.

She has no plans other than getting takeout with Amy and watching some – probably – boring movie from Amy’s DVD collection, so she asks Amy for a rain check and tells her that she’ll make it up to her as she packs up her stuff and gets ready.

She looks much more casual this time, donning only a plaid shirt and black sweatpants that pass as jeans. Her excuse is that Tom didn’t give her much notice, but in reality she’s on her period and there’s no way she’s wearing her leather pants or skinny jeans tonight.

He greets her at the door with a smile, and she follows him inside towards the bar like last time. He gets her a beer and they make small talk, and it’s not until he tells her that everyone will be arriving soon that she even remembers she has to, you know, play music for the next five or so hours.

Setting her stuff up is easy. It’s routine. She talks to Tom while she’s doing it, listening to him ramble on about his best friend’s new boyfriend. She’s not sure why he’s telling  _ her _ , she hardly knows the guy. But hey, if he wants to tell her this stuff, she’s not exactly complaining. It saves her talking about herself, plus she gets to tease him over the fact that he’s jealous over a guy named  _ Chicago _ .

“Chicago!” he repeats, “Who names a kid Chicago?”

She just smirks. After all, her cat is named Kenneth Parcell.

It’s a few hours into the night when she’s just finished playing Straightjacket by  _ Quinn XCII  _ when Tom brings her a beer.

“Oh, not again!” she shouts over the music. “You got me  _ way _ too drunk last time I was here.”

He smiles at her, and holds the beer in front of her face, as if trying to tease her with it. “You sure?”

She nods, looking out at the crowd. She’s already had two, and she’d like to be sober for at least one gig, and she’s really feeling the vibe tonight. She wants to witness this.

//

With a smooth transition of Still Here by  _ Girl Talk _ into a remix of Timestretch by  _ Bassnectar _ , Beca sets up a queue to play at least an hour’s worth of songs, and takes a small break.

Tom is behind the bar now, serving two beers to a man dressed in a bright pink suit. Beca doesn’t question it.

“Deciding to drink?” Tom asks, and she shakes her head.

“Orange juice on the rocks!”

He smiles.

Beca’s too busy listening to the music, feeling the bass pump through her veins, hearing people scream when the next song comes on, that she’s not expecting the body that bumps into her and makes her spill her glass of orange all over Tom’s counter.

“Hey!” she yells, turning around to give this person a piece of her mind.

Only, her words get caught in her throat.

“Chloe?”

Chloe’s eyes widen, and the once shocked and embarrassed expression she had on her face when she realized what she’d done turns into joy, and she puts her hand on Beca’s shoulder as she leans in so Beca can hear her.

“Beca with one C, are you stalking me?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Let me buy you another!” She nods towards the spilled drink, and Beca doesn’t take her eyes off of Chloe. Chloe leans back in. “It’s weird seeing you without Kenneth!”

“Ken!” Beca shouts back with a smile. “And I think bringing a cat to a nightclub may be frowned upon!” When Chloe smiles back, Beca’s legs go weak.

She takes a moment to look at Chloe while Chloe talks to Tom. It’s around the time Chloe asks for a vodka cranberry that Beca zones out and just watches her. Watches the way she scratches at her jaw as she smiles, and the way she sorts her hair out every now and again even though it already looks beautiful. Watches the way she purses her lips before she grins, and the way her eyes twinkle under the neon bar lights.

Chloe looks much different out of her veterinarian uniform. There’s no badges, for one, and her black leather jacket gives off a completely different vibe to the usual white patterned uniform with pink sleeves. She looks – and Beca doesn’t use this word often – ridiculously sexy.

Before Beca knows it, she’s leaning over to tell Chloe that she looks great.

It surprises her that she manages to get the sentence out. Usually she’d end up choking as the first word spilled out of her mouth, but she succeeds. And she takes pride in knowing that she hasn’t made a fool out of herself yet.

“Thanks! You look good yourself! Love the flannel!” Chloe grabs the front of Beca’s shirt and shakes it a little, and it does nothing to dull the thumping in Beca’s heart.

If anybody asks, that’s due to the music and  _ definitely _ not Chloe Beale.

“Mitchell!” Tom yells, and Beca wonders when they’d become acquainted enough to call each other by their second names, but she doesn’t dwell on the thought. After all, her mind seems to be preoccupied with somebody else.

She snaps out of her daze, looking over at him to see him handing her two shots. She looks at Chloe, who also has two shots in her hands and a smile that says “please” and she opens her mouth to say something.

“Come on, Beca Mitchell with one C.” Chloe interrupts before she can even speak. “A thank you for introducing me to  _ the _ Kenneth Parcell!”

“Ken!” she yells, taking the two shots from Tom. He smiles at her, winking, and she’s not sure what that means.

They’re vodka shots – of  _ course _ Chloe drinks vodka – and she has to resist the urge to spit the liquid out when she makes the mistake of holding it in her mouth for too long.

“The idea is to throw it back!” Chloe yells, a grimace on her face after swallowing one of the shots, “but I gotta say, you’re hardcore for sipping it!”

Beca shakes her head, throwing the rest of the shot back, before doing the same with the next one. She slams the two glasses down onto the bar, and shoots a look at Tom who has his arms crossed.

“Not drinking, huh?”

She tells him to shut up and accepts Chloe’s hand when she asks her to dance.

It’s not like her at all, but Chloe’s eyes are too convincing, and Amy has always told Beca that she needs to loosen up more.

She loses her around the time Chloe tells her she needs to go to the bathroom. It only feels like they’ve been dancing for five minutes, but a glance at her phone tells her that it’s almost been an hour since she queued the music on her laptop. Beca tells her she’ll wait at the bar, and she waits for at least fifteen minutes until she eventually gets back on stage to play the rest of her set.

Beca leaves the club with the image of the two of them dancing to Anna of the North in her head, and she falls asleep wondering why on earth she feels so desperate to see Chloe again.

She knows that she’s waiting for the sunset when it’s already night, but Chloe’s something even her dreams can’t make up, and for the first time in her life, she’s sure as hell not about to let these feelings pass just because she’s a little scared about what might happen.

//

Except, maybe letting the feelings pass is for the best. Because the next morning she makes the mistake of looking Chloe up on Facebook.

_ In a relationship with  _ **_Chicago Walp._ **

When she sees the name Chicago, she finally puts two and two together. Tom is Chloe’s best friend, and Chicago is Chloe’s boyfriend, and Chloe is… not hers.

“What a stupid fucking name.”

“What?”

She looks over at Amy sitting at the kitchen table. She’d forgotten she was even here. After all, she’s so used to being alone lately, with Amy constantly being at work and nobody else but Ken having the time of day to hang out with her.

(Okay, she blows everyone ¹ off, but that’s because she’s always busy making mixes or watching TV or eating or doing literally anything else.

¹ Everyone being either Amy or her father.)

“Nothing, it doesn’t matter.”

“How many times do we do this?” Amy asks, walking out of the kitchen with a cheerio stuck to her cheek and a milk stain on her pajama shirt. Beca hopes it’s a milk stain. “You close yourself off and I, being the amazing friend that I am, convince you that it’s  _ okay _ , Beca, to open up about things you’re worried about. Like that time at Bumper’s party last month when you spilled vodka all over your jeans and you didn’t want to tell anybody but it looked like you peed yourself so I said hey, you can borrow my spare shorts that I keep in my bag! Sure, they were a little too big, and people kept calling you Vanilla Ice all night, but–”

“Yep,” Beca interrupts, “thanks for bringing that up. Again.”

“Tell me your troubles, young padawan.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Beca. You know I can keep a secret. I’m a great keeper of secrets. I’m like a safe, that locks,” she mimes a lock and accompanies it with a clicking sound, “with a key. And the key is stashed up my bum. And–you know, you’d be surprised how many times this comes up in one morning. I don’t let anyone near my–”

“–It’s fine, forget it. It’s all good.”

It’s totally not all good, and she knows that Amy can sense that. Part of her is hoping Amy will drop it, but the rest of her remembers that it’s Amy she’s talking to, and she’s not going to drop it until either 1. Beca spills everything, or 2. She starts to cry.

Amy hates a crying Beca Mitchell.

And Beca Mitchell hates a crying Beca Mitchell.

“Is this about your dad? Or… Are you sick? Oh my God, do you have herpes?”

“No! I don’t have herpes, Jesus.”

“That’s something somebody with herpes would say.”

“I don’t–I don’t have  _ any _ form of STD, okay? It’s nothing, I just… I met somebody.” She pauses. Telling Amy about her crushes never turns out well. She always insists on going out drinking to forget about them, and then they end up either pantless or missing one shoe the next morning, completely clueless as to what had happened the night before.

One time Beca woke up in the middle of the night in Amy’s bed with wearing a hoodie with spaghetti in the pockets, Amy nowhere to be seen. She still, to this day, can’t remember what had gone down that night. She’s not sure she  _ wants _ to remember.

“ _ Oh. _ Do I know her? Wait! Is it the bartender downstairs who only works on the weekends? Because let me tell you a secret.” Amy pauses, lowering her voice. “She’s a terrible kisser.  _ Way _ too much tongue.” Beca frowns, confused. She opens her mouth to say something, but Amy interrupts her. “Sorry, totally off topic. Let’s get back to your tragic life.”

“Sure. Thanks, Amy.”

“Who is it?”

She sighs. “Her name is Chloe. She’s, um… She works at the vet.”

“How did you–wait. Beca! Are you using our son as your wingman?”

“No!”

“Kenneth!” Amy yells into the kitchen, and Beca rolls her eyes. Ken walks in –  _ struts _ , as if he knows exactly what he’s doing – and Amy asks him if Beca has been using him for wingman duties, and he meows at her as he climbs onto her lap. “I knew it!”

“Okay, you got me. I didn’t realize you could talk to animals.”

“So this  _ Chloe _ girl,” Amy says, ignoring her. “What’s she look like?”

“Why does it matter what she looks like?”

Amy squints, opening her mouth in shock. “Why does it? Matter? Oh my God, you’re in love with her!”

“Shut up.”

“Does she at least have… you know?” Amy asks, holding her hands up to her boobs, wiggling her eyebrows, and Beca sighs.

“She’s beautiful, or whatever. And I don’t know, we just seem to like… click. Is that weird?”

“It’s weird that you haven’t commented on her butt yet.”

Beca wonders, for a minute, why Amy always insists she’s straight as a line. Judging by the way she’s talking, and the comment about kissing the bartender earlier, it seems like the exact opposite. Ignoring her thoughts, she stands up with her laptop and walks over to her room to pick her phone up off of her bed.

“Tell me you’ve at least tapped that, Beca!”

“I’m leaving now.”

“Chloe’s a nice name. I knew a girl named Chloe back in Australia. I could ask her to fly out here to have sex with you if you want!”

“I can’t hear you!”

“Wait I just remembered,  _ she _ might actually have herpes! I’ll check!”

Beca ignores Amy again as she walks back into the living room, opening the door to the apartment and making her way out, telling Amy she’s going to the bar and to text her if she needs anything.

She hears Amy yell that it’s only 10AM, but she’s already shutting the door behind her, and Amy has no right to lecture her on her early morning drinking habits.

There are certain perks and disadvantages of having an apartment above a bar. Obviously it’s always loud – Beca’s managed to get used to it now though, with help from her headphones – and sometimes people seem to find their way upstairs and start knocking on her door, drunkenly yelling that they need to pee.

“This isn’t a bathroom, it’s my home!” She usually yells, and then they giggle and mutter swear words under their breath before they run away.

The perks are that she’s good friends with the owner slash landlord, and she gets as many free drinks as she wants, within reason. He also doesn’t question her early drinking choices.

“Becaw!” he says when he sees her. Another disadvantage.

“Jesse,” she acknowledges, sitting down on a stool at the bar, checking to see if the bar is wet before she puts her laptop down and opens it up.

“What’s got you all Holden Caulfield this morning?”

She rolls her eyes at the reference. “You can’t just use names as adjectives, that’s not how English works.”

“And yet I just did it. Jesse, one. English, Zero.”

She gives him a look as if to say “please, not today” and he seems to understand.

“Got it. What’ll it be?”

She looks at the way he leans on the bar. He always does that, she’s noticed, and he sometimes cleans a random glass with a white towel when he asks her what’s wrong. She knows that he’s probably imagining himself in a movie – probably something dumb like Wild Wild West – and if she liked movies she’d think that was sweet.

“Whiskey,” she says, and she doesn’t need to look at him to know that he’s asking her if she’s okay with his eyes.

With a dismissive wave of her hand, and a nod from Jesse as he goes to get her a drink, Beca makes the mistake of pressing yes when Chrome asks her if she wants to restore the tabs that she had open before she closed it down.

Chloe’s Facebook profile pops up immediately, and Beca sighs.

Her Facebook header is a picture of her and another blonde girl, laughing hysterically in front of a bar that Beca recognizes as Tom’s. Her cursor hovers over the Add Friend button for what feels like hours until Jesse comes over with her drink.

“Need anything else?” he asks, and she shakes her head as she looks at the information on the left side of Chloe’s profile.

Veterinarian at  **_Hudson Animal Hospital_ **

Studied  **_Veterinary Medicine_ ** at  **_University of California_ **

Went to **_Barden High School_**

In a relationship with  **_Chicago Walp_ **

From  **_Miami, Florida_ **

Beca thinks it’s weird. Weird that she knows all of this now, and weird that Chloe even has so much public information on her Facebook profile in the first place. Especially where she’s from and where she works. Apparently people aren’t as paranoid as she is about serial killers finding them and coming to murder them in the night. Wild.

Despite having all that information public though, all of her photos are private save for her header and profile picture, and one photo of a dog that, on any other day, Beca would think is adorable. And Beca finds herself staring at her profile picture for much longer than anyone would deem necessary, but she can’t really help it.

It’s a photo of a Polaroid. She looks like she’s in a club of some sort, a black snapback on her head with denim shorts and a blue tank top that has a picture of a tiger on it. She has her mouth open, as if surprised that the photo is being taken, and she looks–

“Cute.”

Beca gasps, slams her laptop shut and spins around in the stool so fast that she almost loses balance. Jesse has that stupid grin on his face and she turns to see that nope, he’s no longer behind the bar. He’s standing in front of her, and he’d been watching her stare slack jawed at the – Jesse is right – very cute photo of Chloe.

“New girlfriend?” he asks.

“ _ Psh _ . I  _ wish _ .”

“Straight?”

She shakes her head, turning back around to rest her elbows on the bar as Jesse sits beside her. He has a drink in his hand as well, though Beca’s pretty sure it’s just water. Not everyone has a tragic life – Amy’s words – like her, and not everyone drinks whiskey so early in the morning.

“She has a boyfriend named Chicago Walp,” Beca says, and Jesse laughs.

“Chicago Walp. Interesting name.”

“It’s a  _ terrible _ name.”

He takes a sip of his drink, and Beca stares at the still-full-to-the-brim glass of whiskey that Jesse had poured her.

“Question,” she says. “Why does nothing good ever happen for me?”

He chuckles, looking ahead of him and then back at Beca. He doesn’t answer her though. Beca’s not sure she even wants to know if he does have an answer. Judging by his silence though, he doesn’t. So she takes a sip of her whiskey and hisses when it stings her throat, and she feels him watch her as she opens her laptop.

“Her name’s Chloe,” she says. She’s not sure why she’s telling him. It’s not like her to tell other people about the people she’s pining over. Especially her landlord. And okay Jesse is her friend, she guesses, but it’s still weird talking about this with him.

He stretches his head over to look at Chloe’s profile, seemingly looking impressed when he reads out that she went to the University of California.

“A vet, huh?” he asks. “Where’d you meet her?”

“At the vet.”

“Is Ken okay?”

“He’s fine,” she sighs. Jesse stays quiet, and Beca’s not sure if she wants his advice anyway. “I hardly know her but I really like her.”

“So get her.”

Because it’s that simple, obviously.

When she ignores him, he takes the hint and clinks his glass of water with her glass of whiskey before walking away.


	2. part 2

Beca – back in her apartment, sitting at her desk – is in the middle of listening to Youth Lagoon by  _ Afternoon _ while staring at a gif of a woman dancing that fits scarily well with the song when she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket.

She shakes her head, wondering when her life had come to this, before she pulls her phone out. And out of all the people that would text her – admittedly, not that many – she never expected to see Chloe’s name on her phone screen.

**Chloe Beale (vet):** Was fun seeing you last night. We should totes hang out again some time!

Beca thinks it’s totally unprofessional, but she can’t bring it in her to say no. Is it frowned upon for a vet to date their patient’s co-owner? She’s never really been in this situation before so she has no idea.

_ ‘Totes!’ _ she types out, before sighing and deleting it. Too sarcastic.

_ ‘Sounds good.’ _ Nope. She doesn’t sound interested enough.

_ ‘Totally. How’s Wednesday for you?’ _ Yeesh. Too forward.

**Beca with one C:** Yeah, sounds good. But I’m not bringing Ken. Don’t want him to start choking and give me a heart attack again.

**Chloe Beale (vet):** Damn, and here I was hoping you’d bring him. He’s the only reason I’m texting you right now.

**Beca with one C:** He’s glaring at me right now. Pretty sure he’s planning my murder. Please, feel free to come take him away.

She takes a quick picture of Ken, sending it to Chloe before Chloe responds.

**Chloe Beale (vet):** Aw look at him! So precious.

**Beca with one C:** He’s a demon. – She attaches another photo.

When Chloe doesn’t respond for another ten minutes, Beca figures that their conversation is over. She’s never really been good at holding conversation anyway. But then Chloe texts her when she’s grabbing a glass of water, and she can’t help but grin.

**Chloe Beale (vet):** Um????? Why did you stop sending me pictures of your cat?

An hour later when they’re still texting, Beca changes Chloe’s name in her phone to Chloe. Just Chloe.

It’s not like she’ll be forgetting who she is any time soon.

//

“What’ll it be?”

“Six-inch tuna on Italian. Toasted.”

Beca takes a piece of Italian bread and cuts it in half before scooping the tuna onto it. It’s warm behind the counter and Justin Bieber is playing in the background – seriously, she can’t escape this guy – and her co-worker Calamity keeps knocking into her, and Beca’s never been fond of people stepping into her personal bubble.

She resists the urge to push Calamity away from her or just out right deck her in the face as she puts the sandwich into the grill behind her, but that would be a pretty shitty thing to do, and she’s 99% sure she’d get fired. So she counts to five in her head and takes the next order as she waits for the tuna sandwich to finish heating up.

“You should try smiling more often.”

Beca looks up from where she’d been putting some salad on top of someone’s sub to see Chloe, grinning from ear to ear with a baseball cap on backwards and a bright pink earphone in one ear.

“Chloe Beale, are you stalking me?” Beca asks, a smile already on her face, repeating Chloe’s question from the bar, and Chloe giggles. Literally  _ giggles _ , and it makes Beca’s legs weak. There’s no way she’s a real person.

Chloe takes the one earphone out of her ear and shoves them in her pocket with her phone, looking up at the menu as she rolls her lips, contemplating on what to order.

“What does the chef recommend?”

“Chlo, this is Subway.”

Beca ignores how easily it is to give Chloe a nickname. And if Chloe notices it, she doesn’t say anything. She just purses her lips and makes a thinking face, and Beca rolls her eyes because there’s no way that Chloe takes this long ordering food. If it is, she seriously has to re-think who she develops crushes on.

“Lady, you’re holding the line up, order already.”

Beca glares at the man behind Chloe. He’s the only other person in the line, due to it only being a small Subway, so he really doesn’t have to be a dick about it. She can’t exactly say this though, because as laid back as her manager, Gail, is, she’s sure as hell she’ll be getting fired if anything like that ever leaves her mouth.

Chloe seems to handle it though, turning to smile at the man, batting her eyelashes and telling him that it’s her first time here, and Beca starts to feel uneasy when the guy’s face relaxes and he moves a little closer to Chloe, telling her to take her time.

It’s not jealousy.

Chloe has a boyfriend, and she’d never go for a prick like that anyway.

Still. Something about creepy old men hitting on girls she likes doesn’t sit well with her, so she tells Chloe to order or let this guy go first, and she thinks Chloe is going to tell her what she wants for a second, until she sees her squeeze past the guy and tells him he can go.

The man orders a footlong B.M.T, and Beca makes sure to put way too much ranch on it when he asks for some.

He matches Beca’s glare, before taking his change and walking out.

“So,” Beca says, looking at Chloe. Somewhere in between Chloe flirting with some random, and the said random giving Beca the death stare, Calamity had clocked out and left Beca on her own until Cynthia Rose turns up for her shift.

“So,” Chloe repeats, leaning against the glass. “You’re a subway employee and a DJ?”

Beca laughs. “I’m a DJ slash musician with a part-time job at Subway to keep me from being homeless.”

It’s weird, how smiley she is around Chloe. If she wasn’t herself, she’d think it was gross. But she is herself, and… okay, she still thinks it’s gross.

“You’re really good,” Chloe says. She had said it yesterday when they were texting, and something about hearing it actually come out of Chloe’s mouth makes it a whole lot better, and Beca doesn’t realize she’s blushing until she’s looking down at her feet and her stupid uniform, avoiding any sort of eye contact with Chloe.

“I’m serious!” Chloe says, “Tom told me that you’re his favorite DJ.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He did!”

Beca looks up. Something about seeing Chloe smile like this, looking so casual out of her vet uniform, makes Beca feel normal. Like this is normal. Like they’re friends.

When Chloe finally orders her sub – a 6-inch chicken with tomatoes, cucumber and corn – Beca throws in a cookie on her, and Chloe tells her she’ll text her later, and it feels nice.

//

**Chloe:** That sandwich was the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** You’re just saying that because I was nice enough to buy you a cookie.

**Chloe:** Wrong. I’m saying it because it was literally the best thing I’ve ever tasted. And I’ve tasted a lot of things;)

Beca chokes on her own breath.

//

It’s weird.

Her friendship – if you can call it that – with Chloe is  _ weird _ .

It feels like she’s in high school again. How they text all the time, as if it’s a secret that they’re even talking in the first place, reminds her of when she figured out she liked girls and she and the girl she was secretly dating would text back and forth 24/7, and only meet up once a week to make out behind the bleachers after school.

And as much as she wishes they did, Beca and Chloe don’t meet up once a week to make out behind the bleachers after school.

Chloe will text her a picture of a particularly ugly looking dog that comes into the vet, and Beca will text her a random song for her to listen to because it’s a good song and not at all because it reminds Beca of Chloe.

Sometimes Chloe will post new photos on her Instagram which she had made Beca follow not long after they became friends. Sometimes it’s a photo of a sunrise, sometimes it’s a selfie with an animal, and on the rare occasion, sometimes it’s pictures of her with Chicago.

Those are the only photos Beca doesn’t double tap.

Sometimes Chloe texts her at 1AM asking if she’s awake, and Beca will always be awake, and if she isn’t awake, the text will wake her up and she pretends she’s been awake for hours. She always wants to go back to sleep, but Chloe will ask her something and then they’ll end up texting for hours until Chloe eventually falls asleep.

She’s never done that before. Ruined her sleeping pattern for someone.

She doesn’t like the feeling, but Chloe and her dumb, beautiful blue eyes are the only thing that’s ever on her mind. They don’t really hang out at all unless Ken needs to go to the vet, which, in all honesty, is way too often than Beca would like to admit. And it’s becoming a problem, to both Beca’s overbearing thoughts  _ and _ her and Amy’s wallets.

“Are you sure he needs to go again?” Amy will ask. “I can take him. Oh, you totally want to see that hot redhead again don’t you? Say no more.”

It’s on a particularly warm day in May, after her and Chloe have been sort-of-friends for a few months, when she turns up at the vet with Ken, only to be told not to bother paying.

Chloe confronts her about it before Beca can even explain anything. Of course she does. She’s a very confrontational person, Beca has noticed. She doesn’t care about asking personal questions or sharing equally personal details about herself, so it doesn’t surprise Beca when Chloe asks her if there’s anything  _ actually _ wrong with him.

“I don’t want to take your money if there’s nothing wrong with him. You’re gonna end up bankrupt.” Beca doesn’t answer. She can’t. Chloe’s caught her out, and now she just looks pathetic. “Beca, are you using Ken as an excuse to see me?” Chloe asks with a friendly smile, then quickly adds, “Not that I mind! You’re my friend, it’s always nice seeing you,” and it dawns on Beca that Chloe’s saying this because that’s what they are. Friends.

She’s not as excited about it as she should be.

“I’m… He. He told me–No, he didn’t  _ tell _ me anything, I mean… What I’m trying to–”

“–Hey,” Chloe interrupts, putting her hand over Beca’s hand which is resting on the table that Beca had knocked over on the first visit. “Breathe.”

She’s secretly thankful that Chloe realizes she’s getting distressed. In reality, she doesn’t know what the hell to say to Chloe, because she’s just a weirdo whose cat is an asshole to everybody except Chloe, and so what if she likes visiting the vet?

“I was gonna wait ‘til the weekend to ask you but, um, my boyfriend bought tickets to a Yankees game next week and he can’t make it. You can come with me if you want?”

It’s the first time Chloe has mentioned Chicago since they became friends, and it doesn’t make Beca feel any better. She’d rather just go back to January and never take Ken to the vet. At least then, she wouldn’t be feeling the way she does now.

And she likes to stretch the truth, but the biggest lie Beca’s ever told herself is that she’d be better off without Chloe in her life.

She tells Chloe that she knows nothing about hockey, and Chloe laughs.

“Wrong sport. Try again.”

“Soccer?” Beca asks.

“Close,” Chloe smiles. “It’s a baseball game.”

“Baseball and soccer are totally different.”

“Come on, they’re versing the Red Sox. It should be fun.  _ Please? _ ”

Beca fakes rolling her eyes and she tells Chloe “fine, I’ll come, but only since you’re begging.”

Chloe tells her that she’ll text her the details, and for the first time, Beca leaves the vet thankful that she won’t have to bring Ken again any time soon.

//

**Chloe:** Game starts at 1 so I’ll pick you up at 11:30. We can get brunch x

Beca hates that word. It’s breakfast or lunch. You can mash two words together to make another word. It’s like those people who put people’s names together to create a ‘ship’ name. It’s stupid.

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** Sounds good. Do I need to bring anything?

**Chloe:** Just your cute little self

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** Ok weirdo. I’m not cute.

**Chloe:** Whatever you say

**Chloe:** Cutie.

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** ...

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** enoug

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** enough*

**Chloe:** triple texting? OMG are you flirting with me?

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** I just remembered I have a thing this weekend. can’t come, sorry

**Chloe:** you ass, you can’t break a promise

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** See you on Wednesday

**Chloe:** :D

//

“He went to Yale.”

“Fancy.”

“He does a great Anakin Skywalker impression.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“I should introduce you guys sometime, you’d like him. He has the same music taste as you.”

Beca doubts it, but she doesn’t voice that part of the conversation. Instead she smiles politely, turning the music in the car up, drowning out the sound of her thoughts telling her that she’s stupid for hoping that she ever has a chance with Chloe.

She had made the mistake of asking Chloe why Chicago couldn’t make it to the game, which prompted Chloe to tell Beca about Chicago and his new job at his father’s law firm – of course, he’s a lawyer – and how he’s always so busy and he’s hardly ever in New York but she’s  _ so _ proud of him.

She had zoned out about halfway through the story of how they met, and only perked back up when she heard Chloe ask her if she’s listening.

Of course, she wasn’t. But she had nodded and politely told Chloe to carry on.

As they pull up into a parking spot, Chloe tells Beca that the tickets are in the glove compartment, and Beca pulls the handle down and she reaches in to grab them. She sees a few Polaroids in there along with the tickets, and she smiles as she pulls them out.

“These are nice,” Beca says, looking at the Polaroid at the top of the pile. It’s a picture of the beach, and there’s something about the photo that makes her feel nostalgic. Makes her smile subconsciously as she looks through them, listening to Chloe explain each one to her.

A Polaroid of a small, white dog, similar to the photo on Chloe’s Facebook page. “That’s my parents’ dog, Miguel. He’s a sweetheart.”

One of Chloe and a blonde girl. “My best friend Aubrey at her bachelorette party. Her wife didn’t appreciate me hiring a stripper.”

Beca laughs.

Another one of Chloe and the blonde girl again, along with two other girls. “That’s Stacie and Flo. Stacie is Aubrey’s wife. Flo had just graduated college so we held her a Fight Club themed party.”

When Beca looks at Chloe in confusion, Chloe tells her Fight Club is Flo’s favorite movie, and Beca doesn’t have it in her to tell her that she’s never seen it.

The last one is a picture of Chloe leaning against a balcony looking out onto the ocean. She has a white bathrobe on, and the contrast to her tanned skin makes her look even more beautiful than usual, which Beca never thought could be possible but Chloe Beale is full of surprises. She has sunglasses on and a bright smile, and she’s holding what looks to be a glass of wine casually in her hand.

“Chicago took that one.”

Beca nods, putting the Polaroids back into the glove compartment. She looks over to Chloe, smiling at the black Yankees hat sitting on her head.

“Ready to go?”

//

The game is boring.

Beca’s never been fond of baseball – or any sport for that matter – so she’s not really sure what’s going on. She can admit, there is something enjoyable about seeing Chloe get excited any time something good happens. And even though she has no idea what’s happening, she does cheer whenever Chloe does, and smiles back twice as bright whenever Chloe turns to look at her, grinning from ear-to-ear.

She really needs to stop smiling so much around Chloe.

Chloe talks baseball to her, and Beca gets lost around the time she starts to talk about innings. She feels stupid that she has no idea about any of this, but she’s never really had anybody to teach her about it. Her dad was never a fan of sport, he was always more of a theater and literature type of person.

Chloe teaches her as much as she can when she realizes that Beca is lost, and Beca steals Chloe’s hat when Chloe goes to buy them hotdogs, so all in all, it’s a good day. Beca totally doesn’t think about the fact that it feels way too much like a date.

On the way back to Beca’s apartment, when Chloe is singing along to Break Free by  _ Ariana Grande _ , bouncing in her seat and banging the steering wheel as her hair whips in the breeze, Beca thinks maybe she’s falling in love.

It’s not a huge realization. It was bound to happen, she tells herself. She just didn’t think it’d happen this fast. She looks at Chloe and she feels safe, and her grandmother always told her that that’s what love is supposed to feel like.

Chloe turns to her, still singing, and reaches out, dramatically dancing along to the song as she takes Beca’s face in her hand and squishes her cheeks.

“Stop!” Beca laughs, pushing Chloe’s hands away.

“ _ I only wanna die alive, never by the hands of a broken heart. _ Join in!  _ Don't wanna hear you lie tonight, now that I've become who I– _ ”

“–Please just–eyes on the road, Beale!” Beca pushes Chloe’s face away to get her to look at the road, and she does for a second before turning the radio up and bursting into song again.

“ _ THIS IS. THE PART WHERE I SAY I DON’T WANT YA, I’M STRONGER THAN I’VE BEEN BEFORE! _ ”

“Jesus  _ Christ _ .”

“Come on, join in! – _ part when I break free! 'Cause I can't resist it no more. _ ”

Beca shakes her head, looking out of the window as she tries to not smile at the fact that Chloe is being a complete dork right now. But Chloe’s an amazing singer, despite the fact that she’s just messing around, and Beca can’t help but think about how good she’d probably sound on one of Beca’s tracks.

“– _ I say I don’t want ya, I’m stronger than I’ve been before. This is the part when I break freeee–CAUSE I CAN’T RESIST IT NO MORE! _ ”

The thing about Beca, is that she can never say no to Chloe. It’s the whole reason she’s here in the first place.

She joins in on the next verse, and Chloe’s grin as they harmonize together is totally worth it.

//

“Second left, right?”

“Yup,” Beca puts her phone back in her pocket. She had just texted Amy saying that Chloe is coming round, after they had agreed to hang out at Beca’s place afterwards. She’s not expecting anything to happen – she refuses to be that girl – but she texts Amy just in case Amy planned to bring anybody round tonight. Out of common courtesy, obviously.

Chloe tells her she can’t really stay long because she doesn’t like driving home late, and Beca resists the urge to just tell her to stay. It’ll be weird, she thinks, and she’s gone all day without being weird. She’s doing well. She doesn’t want to fuck it up now.

Ken is asleep when they get into the apartment, and usually he doesn’t bat an eye when Beca comes home alone, but as if sensing that somebody else is here, he shoots his head up like a meerkat, and Chloe grins at him as soon as she sees him.

“Kenneth!” she approaches the tower, immediately petting him as he rubs his head against her.

Beca distracts herself with getting them both a drink before she’ll get caught up thinking about how beautiful Chloe looks in her apartment playing with her cat.

Amy’s cat.

She blinks away the thought, taking two cans of Coke out of the fridge.

“Hey,” she nudges Chloe’s bare arm with the cold can, and Chloe jumps, turning around quickly to see Beca grinning at her.

“You ass,” Chloe says, slapping Beca on the arm.

“You need to stop calling me an ass, Beale.”

“Okay, you butt.”

Beca laughs and it’s not until Chloe adjusts the cap on Beca’s head that she remembers she had stolen it from her at the game.

“Oh.” Beca pulls the cap off, handing it over to Chloe, but Chloe shakes her head.

“Keep it,” she says, taking it to put it back on Beca’s head. “It looks good on you.”

Beca smiles, quickly averting her eyes when she realizes that she’d been holding eye contact for way too long to be normal.

They end up watching a movie, much to Beca’s dismay. It’s not like she wants to, but Chloe had found Amy’s DVD collection on the shelf under the TV, and Beca couldn’t say no. So she let Chloe choose a movie as she made them both nachos out of the chips, salsa, and cheese she bought last week, and she totally doesn’t melt inside when Chloe sits down on her couch with Ken on her lap.

It feels domestic. Like they’re supposed to be doing this.

She’s not sure how she feels about it.

They’re part way through Lost in Translation when Beca finds herself watching Chloe instead of the TV. She can’t help it, really. Chloe has a face that Beca likes to look at. Beca can tell Chloe has seen this movie before because she mimes along perfectly to the bed scene, and it’s different. When she watches movies with Jesse on the odd occasion he has a break from bartending to hang out, she finds it annoying when he mimes the words. He does it too early and sometimes he’s not even correct.

But Chloe. She mimes along perfectly, as if she’s actually saying it, and she smiles to herself every now and again, and it’s adorable.

Chloe turns to where Beca is curled up at the other end of the couch, smiling when she realizes that Beca has been watching her, and Beca immediately turns her head to look at the TV again. It’s weird enough that she’d made eye contact for way too long earlier when she’d offered to give Chloe her hat back. She doesn’t need Chloe thinking she’s a creep.

And she can feel Chloe looking at her, smiling, but she doesn’t want to turn her head to look back at her in case she does or says something she regrets. So she focuses on the TV, and lets out a relieved breath when Chloe finally stops looking at her.

//

Beca’s not sure when she falls asleep, but she wakes up on the couch when a loud bang erupts from outside the apartment.

She’s awake immediately, standing up as she looks around the room. And she’s not sure what time it is but Chloe must have left because she’s nowhere to be seen, and Ken is back on his tower instead of on Chloe’s lap.

She picks up the remote – it’s the first thing she sees – and makes her way towards the door. She’s never really been good at self-defense, but she got into enough fights in high school to be able to land a mean left-hook if necessary. Gripping the remote like a baseball bat in both her hands, she reaches one hand out to unlock the door, pulling it open fast – “like a band-aid” she tells herself in her head – and she breathes out a relieved sigh when she sees that it’s only Amy.

“I could’ve killed you,” Beca whispers, helping Amy up from where she’s sitting on the floor.

“With a TV remote?”

“Where have you been?”

Amy’s drunk, clearly, and she’s ignoring Beca and mumbling something about Vin Diesel when Beca helps her up and into the apartment. She takes her into her room, and she pours her a glass of water and leaves it beside her bed for the morning, along with a box of Advil.

That night, long after Amy has fallen asleep, she works Jessie’s Girl into a remix, and she totally doesn’t picture Chicago as Jessie, and she totally doesn’t picture Chloe as Jessie’s girl.

(She’ll never admit this, but she could’ve sworn she wished for unconditional love for her birthday that one time when she was nine years old,  _ not _ unrequited.)

//

Much to Beca’s dismay, she learns over the next few weeks that Chloe seems to like Chicago a lot, and Beca hasn’t met him, she’s only seen pictures, so he could be the most perfect man in the world for all she knows – she doubts it – so she doesn’t do anything. Doesn’t act on her feelings. Doesn’t make it weird. Doesn’t tell Chloe about the dream she had about them being together. Doesn’t tell her it was the best night’s sleep she’s had in a long time. 

And despite this, it doesn’t change the fact that all of this is true. Beca wants to be with Chloe. Whether it’s now or in ten years or in another life, she wants her. More than she’s ever wanted anything. More than she wanted that pet turtle back in third grade.

Amy doesn’t really help. Whenever she’s not working, she’s sleeping, and whenever she’s not sleeping, she’s at parties. She always invites Beca, but she knows that Beca’s not fond of the types of parties she goes to, so most nights Beca watches reruns of Friends with Ken glaring at her from the top shelf of his tower, wishing that Chloe was sat beside her.

//

The first time Beca meets Chicago, she doesn’t even find out it was him until a few hours later.

He comes into Subway, and Beca’s too preoccupied with all the customers to stop and realize exactly who he is. He’s wearing a suit and sunglasses, and looks totally different to the person in the Instagram pictures with Chloe. He orders two of the same sandwich and when Beca gets off work, she sees a text from Chloe.

**Chloe:** Thanks for the sandwich:P

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** sorry just saw this, i was working. What sandwich?

**Chloe:** Chicago bought me a sub. Said that the person who made it was a little grump. Figured he went to your subway ;)

_ Asshole _ , Beca thinks, squeezing past two people stood still on the sidewalk.

**Beca (SubwayDJ):** I’m not a grump. If I’d have known it was him I would’ve created a song and dance like I do for all my friend’s boyfriends.

**Chloe:** Ha ha, very funny. What time do u finish?

**Grumpy:** Already done. 

**Chloe:** I’m coming over

**Grumpy:** Oh fun.

**Chloe:** shut up u love me

//

She and Chloe hang out a lot more in the weeks leading up to summer.

Chloe calls them dates, but Chloe’s still with Chicago, and Beca’s still waiting for something that’ll never happen.

Sometimes Beca wakes up extra early so they can get coffee together before Chloe goes to work, and sometimes Beca brings her lunch because Chloe tends to forget, and she doesn’t want her eating at the gross sandwich shop across the road.

They go for long drives and listen to music, and Chloe’s music taste consists of the current top 40, but Beca shows her new songs that she’s found on Spotify that week and Chloe seems to love them. Eventually, she shows Chloe her favorite mixes, and the look on her face as she tells her they’re amazing and “ _ you’re _ amazing Becs” makes Beca fall in love just a little bit more each time.

Chloe watches Beca play at different clubs, and she’s always cheering the loudest and dancing the craziest, and Chloe is the only person in the world who Beca lets into her personal bubble while she’s performing.

She feels like her life is the scene from Hercules where Meg sings about not being in love when she clearly is. And as much as she wants to be the Hercules of the situation, she’s not. She’s definitely Meg.

They spend one night after they’d been to see a movie sitting on the hood of Beca’s car, telling each other about themselves and their childhood and everything in between.

Beca tells Chloe that she’s from Odessa, a small city in Texas, and to say that Chloe is shocked is an understatement. She asks Beca why she doesn’t have a heavy Southern accent, and Beca tells her it’s because she moved up to Ohio when she was really young and she never picked it up. She tells her about her mother, how she died when Beca was really young and it’s always been just her and her father and his wife Sheila. She tells her that she was mad at her dad for so long for finding someone new so soon after her mother’s death, and they’ve only just really started to fix their relationship.

She’s glad when Chloe doesn’t make a fuss out of it.

Chloe tells her she was born in Miami and she lived there her whole life before moving to California for college. Beca asks her why she moved to New York instead of staying in Cali, and Chloe explains that California was too far away from her dads in case they needed her.

“Your dads,” Beca says. “Plural?”

“Plural. Steve and Eric.”

Beca smiles. “That’s neat.”

“Do you  _ know _ how many dad jokes I had to put up with growing up?”

They look for shapes in the clouds, watch the sunset, and point out the only stars visible in the sky when it gets dark.

Chloe tells Beca one night that she thinks she identifies as pansexual now since she read about it on Tumblr, and Beca smiles and tells her that that’s awesome. Chloe grabs her hand and she has tears in her eyes as she pulls Beca closer and it takes Beca seven minutes to calm her heart down.

She makes Beca go to museums and art galleries because she loves art, and she promises one day to draw Beca’s portrait when she has time off work, and Beca lets Chloe link arms with her as she shows her which paintings she loves the most.

Chloe’s friend, Emily, owns a bar with her boyfriend Benji and they hold open mic nights every Saturday night, and when Beca isn’t DJing or making sandwiches, she tags along with Chloe and watches when Chloe sings her favorite song that week. One week it’s Peacekeeper by Fleetwood Mac, the next it’s Green Light by Lorde, the next it’s Hurricane by Lord Huron. It makes Beca smile, that Chloe’s favorite song always changes.

“There’s too many songs in the world for you to just have  _ one _ favorite” Chloe argues.

It’s so Chloe.

They go to aquariums and zoos and long walks in central park. Chloe likes to play a game where she watches people and guesses their name and what their life is like. Beca’s not very good at the game, but Chloe can read people well, she’s noticed, so she listens to her as she guesses about all these people’s lives.

They even crash a wedding reception one time. Chloe manages to convince one of the bridesmaids that the two of them are old family friends of the groom, and they eat as much free food and drink as much free champagne as they can before stumbling into a cab back to Beca’s place and falling asleep on opposite ends of the couch.

Beca teaches Chloe how to play Overwatch on her PS4, and one day Chloe comes back with a bunch of games that Tom had left at her place months ago. They play horror games together, and Beca tries not to melt when Chloe cuddles right up to her when she’s playing Outlast, close enough that she can feel Chloe’s breath on her neck. 

Close enough that it terrifies her.

Chloe likes to make Beca do things that she never thought she’d ever do in her life. She persuades her to volunteer one weekend at an animal shelter upstate. They go to NYC pride together – something Beca’s never had the courage to do on her own – and they each get a small equality symbol tattooed on their wrists. It’s liberating and freeing, and that night Beca calls her dad telling him she loves him, and she cries when she realizes it’s the first time she’s said it in years.

He tells her a few days later that he and Sheila are moving to Brooklyn for Sheila’s work, and Beca would like to say that she’s not happy about it, but she’s missed her dad. She only sees him once every few months, so she’s looking forward to him actually living near her. Not being able to see him, especially since they’re trying to fix their relationship, has been pretty hard on her.

She offers to help them move in but he knows Beca and he knows that she really doesn’t want to help, so he tells her that she can show them around the city and take them for dinner instead.

They go to a small restaurant that Chloe had shown her in West Village, and Sheila talks about her new job and her dad talks about an interview for a teaching job that he has, and Beca tries not to grin when she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket with a text that she’s 90% sure is from Chloe.

**Beale:** Where are u?

**Becs:** dinner with my dad

**Beale:** oh, fun! When u back?:)

**Becs:** Boring actually. Save me

**Beale:** I have wine and a netflix subscription waiting for u when u come home

_ Home _ , Beca thinks. She likes the sound of that.

“Beca, are you listening to me?”

//

It dawns on her one day when she’s getting ready to meet Chloe at the bar downstairs that Chloe hasn’t mentioned Chicago in a while, and the two of them have been hanging out so much in the past few weeks that she wonders if Chloe has even had time to  _ see _ Chicago.

Obviously a part of her is hoping they’ve broken up, but another part of her doesn’t want to be Chloe’s rebound if they have. It’s not like Beca just has a small crush on this girl that’ll eventually go away. It’s so much more than that, and she feels kind of pathetic about it.

Instead of dwelling on it, she waves goodbye to Amy as she leaves the apartment and makes her way downstairs.

Chloe is talking to Jesse when she gets to the bar. For a second, she panics. Maybe Jesse has let it slide that she likes Chloe. Maybe he’s not actually her friend, but he’s just been using her for the past two years until he had found the perfect moment to get revenge for that one time his (ex) girlfriend had kissed her. Maybe this is their downfall.

“Becaw!”

She relaxes a little when Chloe turns around with a huge smile, and she takes a breath as she approaches the two of them.

“What’s going on losers?” Beca asks, leaning against the bar, smiling when Chloe wraps her arms around her from where she’s sitting on the bar stool.

She drapes her arm over Chloe’s shoulders, and resists the urge to grin when Chloe tells her that she was just telling Jesse how awesome she is.

“I  _ am _ pretty awesome,” Beca says, removing her arm from around Chloe when Chloe finally stops hugging her to stand up.

“You ready?” Chloe asks, adjusting the Yankees hat that Beca has on her head.

Beca nods.

Chloe had found another art exhibition at a small gallery ten minutes away, so of course, she asked Beca to tag along with her. They stop at a coffee shop on the way, and Chloe buys them both a skinny latte, and Beca doesn’t have it in her to tell Chloe that she hates lattes.

She melts when Chloe turns to her, a huge grin on her face as she says “hey becs, I love you a latte.”

When Chloe’s hand slips into hers, Beca feels like maybe this is a dream. And when Chloe asks about the smile she’s trying so hard to suppress, she tells her that she saw a cute dog across the street, because there’s no way she’s telling Chloe that holding her hand like this makes her feel alive.

Beca’s in love with how she feels around Chloe.

It’s the first time she’s thought about being happy. It’s not like she’s always miserable, but living practically alone in a huge city that she’s not used to with almost no friends; well, it’s impossible not to feel a little lonely. If it wasn’t for Chloe, Beca would have never thought about doing all this stuff.

Like going to parades and trying new foods. Singing at open mic nights and ordering cocktails instead of beers at bars. Going to art galleries and seeing how many paintings they can touch before they get thrown out. Stopping for a second to just appreciate life.

And it’s all because of Chloe, and Beca thinks that maybe Chloe is her best friend.

When Chloe points to a piece of art and tells Beca that it looks like her, and then proceeds to take a video of Beca with the painting in the background, Beca can’t stop grinning. Because she loves how this feels. Loves how Chloe makes inappropriate jokes about the art, and how she always pretends to fall into them, and no matter how many times she does it, she finds herself hilarious every time. Beca loves that about Chloe. How she, too, is in love with life.

“Look, that looks like Adam Sandler,” Chloe points to a painting, and Beca shakes her head with a laugh. She looks over at another one. “That one looks like Grandmaster Flash!”

Beca’s hand is sweating from holding Chloe’s hand, but when Chloe drags her along to a different part of the exhibit, saying that she thinks there’s a gift shop through here, Beca gladly follows behind.

//

Beca walks Chloe back to her apartment that evening when the gallery closes.

They stop to pick up Chinese food, and Beca figures that Chloe is ready to call it a night when they both get their food in separate bags rather than together like usual.

Chloe hums to fill the silence. She starts with the first song on Halsey’s new album, and only stops whenever either of them have something to say.

It surprises Beca when Chloe invites her inside. It’s only four, so it’s not like she’s asking her to stay the night, but it still gives Beca butterflies knowing that Chloe is asking her to come in after they’ve spent the day together. It means Chloe’s not ready to say goodbye just yet, and it feels oddly similar to the date she went on with that British guy named Theo last year.

It’s not a date though.

It dawns on her that she’s never actually seen Chloe’s place before. Whenever they hang out, it’s always at Beca and Amy’s. So much that Amy has started to find it weird when she comes home to Chloe  _ not _ sat on the sofa with her legs draped across Beca’s lap.

Chloe’s apartment is much smaller than Beca had expected. She’s aware of how loaded Chloe’s dads are, but then again, Chloe is one person, and one person doesn’t need much space.

There are canvases on the walls with signatures that Beca recognizes as Chloe’s, and she spends a while looking at each one of them as Chloe goes to heat their food up. They’re all so different, but so  _ Chloe _ , and Beca never knew that she was  _ this _ good at art.

Chloe’s bed is behind a small wall rather than in another room, and there are cute little statues sitting on top of the wall, along with a few candles, plants, and picture frames. Beca walks over to look at the pictures, smiling when she sees a framed selfie of the two of them at pride.

“I love that photo.”

Beca turns when she hears Chloe’s voice beside her, smiling as she puts the picture frame back. She has two plates in her hands, and Beca takes the outstretched one off of Chloe with a polite thank you. Chloe puts a Spotify playlist that she’d made for Beca on in the background as they eat at the table, talking about what their plans are for the summer.

It’s when Beca’s finished telling Chloe about how she’s being dragged along for a meal with her dad and stepmom next week that Chloe tells Beca she’s going to Miami for a week in July.

“It’s my birthday on the twenty second and my dads want me to come home. Apparently turning twenty seven is a big deal.”

“That should be fun. It’ll be nice. Taking a break from the vet for a while.”

“Sure.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I don’t know, is it weird that I’m gonna miss you?”

Beca thinks about Chicago. She shouldn’t be thinking about him right now, but this is ridiculous. Surely, Chloe’s going to miss him too. Surely, Chloe’s told him this.

“It’s only a week,” Beca says, trying to cheer Chloe up a little. “You’ll be back before you know it.”

Chloe looks down, smiling. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m being dumb.”

“You’re not being dumb.” She wants to reach out and put her hand over Chloe’s, but that’d be weird and she’s been doing so well. “You want me to drive you to the airport?”

Chloe smiles, nodding her head and saying “yes please” before going back to eating her food.

//

The days leading up to Chloe’s flight to Florida seem to fly by, which Beca hates.

She may make as many mixes as she can in the short time and upload them to a thumb drive so Chloe has something to listen to on the plane.

Another downside to the trip is that the flight is at 3AM, and it’s not until the evening before when Beca is cleaning her room that she gets a call from Chloe asking her when she’s coming round.

“It’s eight, Chlo, don’t we have to set off to the airport at one? Go to sleep.”

“Oh, you’re not… You’re not staying here?”

Beca frowns in confusion. They hadn’t made any plans to stay anywhere.

“Um… What?”

“I figured you were staying at my place tonight, you know, since you’re taking me. That’s still okay with you, right?”

“Oh,” Beca looks around the room. Her clothes are taking up all the space on her bed, and she’s only half-dusted the top of the shelves in her closet, and it’s not like her to leave her bedroom in this state. “If that’s easier…” she trails off.

“I mean, it saves you driving to my apartment so late at night. The streets can be crazy past midnight.”

“Right.”

“So… I’ll see you soon?”

Beca looks around the room. She really shouldn’t leave it a mess, but Chloe has a point. She doesn’t want to be driving to Chloe’s at midnight.

“Sure. Soon.”

//

Chloe welcomes her with a hot chocolate and a warm smile.

Beca wants to cry because of how adorable Chloe looks in her blue pajamas with ducks and clouds on them, but she just tells her “cute pajamas” and hopes that Chloe doesn’t find it weird. She had expected at least a movie before they went to sleep, but Chloe is pulling Beca by the hand towards her bed, and Beca doesn’t have time to protest before Chloe is cuddling up to her.

“Um.” Beca’s voice is quiet, and Chloe reaches out and switches off the lamp beside her bed, and Beca figures there’s no arguing with a sleepy Chloe Beale. So she pulls her phone out of her pocket and sets her alarm, before falling asleep in Chloe’s arms.

She feels gross when she wakes up. It’s not often that she sleeps in her clothes from the day before, but she never makes a habit of doing it in the vicinity of the girl she likes. Seriously, she probably stinks, and she doesn’t want Chloe thinking she’s  _ used _ to this.

“Hey,” Chloe says from across the room, peering up over the little wall separating the bed with the rest of the apartment. “I was just about to wake you. We should set off soon. Want something to eat?”

Beca rubs her eyes, sitting up as she looks around, “no,” she mutters. “No thanks. Can I shower?”

“Sure!”

Beca has no idea why Chloe is so peppy at this time of night, but she doesn’t dwell on it. It’s cute. Bizarre, but cute nonetheless.

She showers quickly, trying not to get her hair wet. She’ll wash that later when she’s back from the airport. Chloe makes her a coffee and heats up a bagel, and even though Beca said she didn’t want anything to eat, she says thank you and politely eats it.

Chloe’s singing along to a HAIM song that she claims has been stuck in her head for a week when they finally leave the apartment for the airport.

Beca is carrying Chloe’s suitcase with one of Chloe’s jackets draped over her shoulder, listening to Chloe sing Want You Back, and she knows that she’s going to miss her so much.

//

Saying goodbye to Chloe proves harder than Beca had thought.

Which is dumb because Chloe’s only going to be gone for a week, and it’s not like they’ll never see each other again. Chloe will most likely Skype or Facetime her and Beca has no doubt that they’ll text a lot too. Still, something about standing there in the airport waiting for the boarding call for Chloe’s flight makes her uneasy. Gives her tingles in her feet and makes her stomach do flips.

Chloe turns to her, a smile on her face as she takes her bag from Beca’s hands. Just as she opens her mouth to say something, a woman talking over the speaker interrupts her, proclaiming that the flight to Florida is leaving soon.

Chloe scrunches her face up in that way that Beca thinks is way too adorable to be real, and Beca smiles back at her.

“That’s me,” Chloe states, in reference to the boarding call, looking down at her bag.

“You have everything,” Beca says, as if sensing what Chloe is thinking. “You’ve double checked. Then triple checked.”

Chloe laughs, bringing her eyes back up to look at Beca.

“I keep thinking I’ve forgot something.”

“You have the whole of your apartment packed into that bag, Beale, you have everything you need.”

Something flashes across Chloe’s face but Beca doesn’t have chance to question it before Chloe is pulling her into a hug, telling her that she’s going to miss the heck out of her.

And as much as Beca would like to tell Chloe that she’ll miss the heck out her too, she kind of has a reputation to uphold, and she doesn’t want Chloe knowing that she’s probably going to be a mess for the next week without her keeping Beca sane.

So she hugs Chloe back and tells her – convinces herself, too – that the week will be over before she knows it.

And seeing Chloe walk into the terminal isn’t the best thing Beca’s had to witness, but when she receives a text two minutes later from Chloe, she can’t stop the grin from forming on her face.

**Beale:** Miss you already x

**Becs:** Loser. Have a safe flight.

**Beale:** I love u

**Beale:** ya know, just in case the plane crashes and we never see each other again.

**Becs:** Shut up. Text me when you land.

**Beale:** You didn’t say you loved me back:’(

Beca contemplates saying it. The full thing.  **I love you. I’m** **_in_ ** **love with you.** Maybe if she says it over text while Chloe is just about to get onto a plane, it’ll be easier for her when Chloe inevitably turns her down. She won’t have to deal with the awkward speech from Chloe. “It’s not you, it’s me. You’re my friend, blah blah blah.” If she says it now, she has more time to get over it.

**Becs:** Jeez. Love you. Happy?

Chloe deserves a lot better than a text though.

She deserves a lot better than Beca Mitchell.

**Beale:** Yep! :) xxxx


	3. part 3 (finale)

Beca takes as many extra shifts at work as she can and plays at Tom’s three nights in a row to distract herself over not being able to see Chloe. It leaves her exhausted and she sleeps for fourteen hours, but at least she gets quite a big paycheck from it all.

She uses the money for groceries and rent, and a cheap pair of headphones because Ken had ripped the cord on her others, and only then does she buy Chloe a birthday present to give her when she gets back from Florida.

And okay, maybe that present is a necklace that Chloe had pointed out to her a few days ago, eyes full of love and adoration for the blue pendant that she said she could never afford with her paycheck.

She still feels like somehow it’s not enough though, so she makes some mixes for when Chloe comes home and inevitably goes with Beca to the next club she’s playing at. Because it always feels amazing, no doubt about it, seeing Chloe’s reactions to Beca putting her favorite songs in her mash-ups to play for hundreds of people.

She makes sure to include Titanium in one of the mixes, remembering that Chloe had mentioned that it’s one of her favorite songs of all time.

(Okay, she mashes it up with five separate songs and makes Amy, Jesse,and even her dad choose their favorite, but she’s not going to talk about that.)

//

Chloe’s been gone for four days when she calls Beca on facetime, and Beca has to take a few deep breaths before she’s greeted with those blue eyes that she seems to fall more and more in love with each passing day. She doesn’t think about how this is the first time she’s seen Chloe’s face since she left. How they’ve only really been texting and calling each other. She knows Chloe is busy with her parents though. She doesn’t feel too sad about it.

Plus, Chloe is here now, and she’s looking beautiful. The phone doesn’t seem to capture exactly _how_ beautiful she is though, so Beca doesn’t get too distracted in her own thoughts about how much it pains her not to be able to tell Chloe that she looks gorgeous as always.

She doesn’t use the word gorgeous often, but Chloe Beale really is gorgeous.

**_“Hey Becs!”_ **

“Hey you, what’s up? How’s Florida?” She moves her laptop off of her lap and sits up in bed as she holds her phone in front of her. She always hates facetiming people because she can’t stand looking at her own face in the corner of the screen but Chloe doesn’t seem to be phased by the sight of Beca’s makeupless face.

**_“Good! I’m at the beach right now, look!”_ **

Beca sees a flash of concentration on Chloe’s face before she taps the screen and the camera switches to show the beach. She gets a glimpse of Chloe’s bare legs for a second before Chloe is standing up and rotating the camera around slowly so that Beca can see the whole beach. The sound of the wind makes Beca cringe a little, but she can hear Chloe asking **_“isn’t it beautiful?”_ ** loudly behind the camera, and yes, it is beautiful. And Beca wishes she was there with her instead of making mixes alone in her bedroom like the loser that she is.

“It looks great,” Beca says, and then Chloe is in view again, sunglasses perched on her head as she lays back down on – what Beca is guessing –  a sun lounger. “Nice shades.”

**_“Thanks. They’re Gucci.”_ **

They’re huge and white with gold lenses, and they somehow make Chloe look even prettier than usual. “Of course they are.”

Chloe laughs, and God, Beca’s missed that laugh.

**_“So what are you up to? What’s new with you, Beca with one C?”_ **

Beca breathes out a laugh, shaking her head. “Nothing, really,” she says. “ _Oh_ , I met someone yesterday whose name was literally Jack Schitt, so my week is... above average.” Chloe laughs again, that soft giggle that makes Beca smile, and she has to tilt the phone so it’s only showing half of her face because she doesn’t want Chloe seeing how goofy and happy and _blushy_ she makes her.

**_“No way.”_ **

“Yes way,” she confirms. “I also played a few more gigs at Tom’s.” She stands up, making her way out of her room and into the kitchen, trying not to trip on the pair of boots that she left outside of her room last night.

**_“How did they go?”_ **

“Good. Great.”

**_“Yeah?”_ **

“Yep.”

 **_“How’s Kenneth?”_ ** Beca smiles, turning her phone around to show Chloe that Ken is fast asleep perched on the top of his cat tower. **_“Beautiful!”_ ** she hears Chloe say, and she smiles as she turns the phone back around. **_“And you, Bec, you’re beautiful too.”_ **

Beca’s cheeks burn slightly at the compliment, but she laughs and tells her to shut up and Chloe is grinning and Beca doesn’t quite know what to do or say. She never does in these situations. Chloe does that a lot and it affects Beca more than she’d like to ever admit. Chloe will randomly tell her how talented she thinks she is, and it completely floors Beca. Completely throws her off her game.

“Ditto.”

Or it would throw her off her game if she had any.

Luckily for the both of them, Chloe has more game than Beca, so she switches the conversation seamlessly into one about hanging out when they’re back, and the thought of it gives Beca a type of excitement she only ever feels with Chloe because just the thought of seeing her in person again makes her feel like she can actually get through this week.

She’ll never say that out loud though. Ever.

“Do you want me to pick you up from the airport?”

**_“I think Chicago is picking me up.”_ **

Beca nods. “Right,” she says. “That’s cool.”

They talk for a while until Chloe’s cousin shows up and drags Chloe away to play in the ocean, and they part with a “see you soon” from Beca and a **_“bye, love you!”_ ** from Chloe, and it feels so natural that Beca doesn’t even hesitate when she says it back.

The thing that scares her the most is that telling Chloe that she loves her is one of the most natural things that has ever come to her.

//

Chloe’s an absolute dork, Beca concludes, when she receives an excited string of texts from her at 9AM the next morning.

 **Beale:** DID U KNOW cows have BEST FRIENDS and a group of flamingos is called a FLAMBOYANCE :O :O :O

 **Beale:** penguins only have one mate and they “propose” by GIVING THEM A PEBBLE and otters sleep HOLDING HANDS SO THEY DON’T FLOAT AWAY FROM EACH OTHER !!!!

 **Beale:** THERE’S A TYPE OF JELLYFISH THAT LIVES FOREVER

 **Becs:** Good morning to you too Chloe

 **Beale:** when male puppies play with female puppies they intentionally let the FEMALE PUPPY WIN!!!!!!!!!!!

 **Beale:** a group of porcupines is called a PICKLE and baby puffins are called PUFFLINGS

 **Becs:** Oh my God. You’re a vet, how did you not know all this?

 **Chlo:** WORMS COMMUNICATE BY SNUGGLING

Beca just laughs, and she finds herself thinking that she really wants to hear Chloe’s voice right now, because she can imagine just how excited she is about all this new information. Beca’s not a huge fan of animals herself, but hearing Chloe get excited over them never gets old, and it’s one of the cutest things about Chloe.

She’s not sure if Chloe’s busy though, so she carries on texting her until Chloe tells her that she needs to go, and she makes sure to look up more animal facts to tell Chloe when they talk later.

//

The night Chloe is due to return to New York, Amy texts Beca to bring back pizza when her shift ends, and she returns home to the smell of weed and burnt food. It’s not a rare occurrence but sometimes Beca returns home from work to a high Fat Amy and it’s not that she _hates_ it but she thinks there are definitely better things to return home to. Like maybe a Fat Amy that has actually done laundry or a Fat Amy that has cleaned the bathroom for once.

She loves her best friend but sometimes she can be a little high maintenance - okay, a _lot_ high maintenance - and Beca can hardly look after herself, let alone another fully grown human being.

“Amy?” she shuts the door behind her, turning around to see her roommate laid back on the sofa, one foot propped up on the coffee table and the other in an ripped Spongebob Squarepants slipper, and the first thing she notices is their brand new juicer in Amy’s hands, and she sighs because - “Jesus, are you–are you using our juicer as a _bong_?” - only Amy would manage to turn a juicer into a bong.

Amy looks over at her, a small, dopey grin forming on her face. “Maybe I am. You can’t prove shit,” she says, eyes suddenly widening. “Shit. I apologize for swearing. Oh, I did it again.”

Beca sighs, dropping her keys onto the table by the door.

“You’re forgiven,” Beca mumbles. “Nobody’s listening.”

“I love you,” Amy whines as she reaches her arm out, and Beca rolls her eyes, dropping her bag on the floor by the door and hanging her jacket on one of the hooks on the wall.

“I love you too, Ames.”

“Oh, not you.” Amy puts the juicer - the bong or… whatever it is - on the table. “I was talking to the pizza.”

Beca looks down at the pizza box that she has been balancing in her hand since she came home, then back up to Amy who is holding her arms out for the pizza box. She drops it onto Amy’s lap as she makes her way past her to open a window, because there’s no way that the smell of weed will be dissipating any time soon if she doesn’t at least _try_ to get rid of it.

“It fucking stinks in here. Where’s Ken?”

“Jesse’s looking after him,” Amy replies. Beca has to credit her, at least she had the moral decency to remove the cat from the apartment _before_ she hot boxed it.

She walks into the kitchen and groans at the state of it, running both hands through her hair before resting them on her hips. There’s empty Cheetos packets and a spilled can of Coke on the table and on any other day, she’d clean it up, but she’s exhausted so she’ll leave it to Amy to clean up in the morning.

“Hey Beca?”

“Hmm?” She gets herself a bottle of water from the fridge, stretching her head towards the door to try and look at Amy but she can’t see her.

“Does it hurt for water to become an ice cube?”

“What?”

“Does it hurt for water to become ice? You're literally changing your molecular composition, you're probably gonna experience _some_ discomfort.”

Beca frowns and ignores her. If she’s learned anything from living with Amy, it’s that getting into a philosophical debate with her when she’s high is the worst thing you could _ever_ do, so she changes the subject.

“Does Jesse know you’re smoking in the apartment?”

Amy laughs, already forgetting about her ice cube question. “Chill out, Donnie Darko, he’s the one who sold me the weed.”

Beca goes back into the living room where Amy is now trying to light the end of her pizza on fire, and she sighs.

“Don’t,” Beca says, reaching over to take the lighter from Amy’s hands.

“Hey!” Amy reaches out to grab Beca’s hand tightly, and Beca thinks maybe she’s about to get a slap for taking Amy’s lighter, but then Amy reaches into her pocket and pulls out something small and round, wrapped up in a white packet. “You wanna trip?” She asks, and Beca scrunches her face up in confusion.

“What?” She asks, squinting her eyes and moving closer to look at what Amy has in her hand, just as Amy lets go of her own hand to unwrap the object, and Beca laughs. “Is that a cough drop?”

“You wanna trip bro?”

Beca shakes her head, smiling. At this point she’s seen Amy high enough times to know that she makes absolutely no sense, so she throws the lighter through the doorway of Amy’s room onto her bed, before almost tripping on a pair of Amy’s jeans on the way to her own room.

“Where you going? Come get high with me, Beca!”

“Good _night_ , Amy.”

//

A frantic knock on the door wakes her up from a deep sleep, and she rolls over to pick her phone up from the table beside her bed to see that it’s almost 12AM. She sees a few texts and missed calls, but the bright light hurts her eyes and it’s too blurry to read right now.

There’s another knock just as she feels like she’s about to fall back asleep, and she pushes herself to get out of bed and answer the door.

“I swear to God,” she mumbles to herself, running a hand through her hair, “if this is another drunk asshole from the bar I’m gonna–LOOK, DUDE, I KNOW I LIVE ABOVE A–”

One of the last things she expects to see on her doorstep at midnight is a crying Chloe Beale.

It’s like a slap in the face, how she immediately wakes up, eyes wide and alert, and opens the apartment door wider as Chloe steps inside.

“You’re shivering,” Beca whispers. She tells herself she’s whispering because she doesn’t want to wake Amy but the truth is, she’s scared that talking any louder will scare Chloe away and if Chloe leaves as fast as she came, Beca knows that she’ll be worried about her for the rest of the night.

“It’s cold,” Chloe says, closing the door and dropping her suitcase on the floor before bringing her arms up to hug herself.

Beca looks down at the suitcase and then back up at Chloe and then Chloe is grabbing her shoulders and pulling her in for a hug. She tenses at first because she’s still not used to this whole physical contact with another human being _thing_ , but Chloe smells like Chloe and it dawns on her that she hasn’t seen her in a week and – like she knew she would – she really, really missed her.

Just as she feels Chloe’s arms start to drop, she tightens the hug and closes her eyes, and it’s only when she feels Chloe let out a heavy breath into her shoulder that she processes exactly what is happening.

Chloe is here. Crying. Hugging her. Cold.

And it’s scary.

“Are you… Can I get you anything? Do you… Wha–um…”

“Stop talking for a sec.”

Beca nods and shuts her mouth, closing her eyes for a moment until Chloe eventually pulls away.

They stay close though, and having Chloe so close to her like this doesn’t feel as good as Beca thought it would. Maybe it’s because Chloe is crying and vulnerable, or maybe it’s because Beca is tired and worried about what happened to her.

Chloe still stays close though.

“He didn’t show up,” Chloe whispers. She looks down at her bag and then towards the messy living room, then back up at Beca. “He...”

Beca’s not an idiot, but she asks anyway.

“Chicago?”

Chloe hums, and Beca reaches out to take her hand. It’s cold and shaking, but Beca keeps a tight hold on it as she pulls Chloe through the apartment and into her bedroom.

“I was... waiting at the airport and he didn’t come.”

“What happened? How did you get here?”

Chloe sits down on Beca’s bed as Beca goes to her closet to take out a blanket. “Took a cab.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you, uh…” Beca puts the blanket on the bed and stands awkwardly, not really knowing what to do. “Do you need anything?”

“Can I take a shower?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” she walks over to her closet again, this time to take out a clean towel. “Do you have clean clothes in your suitcase?”

“Mmhm.”

Chloe stands up, stopping to take the towel from Beca with a sad, gracious smile before going into the bathroom.

Beca’s not used to this. Both consoling people and also a sad Chloe Beale. In the time they’ve known each other, Chloe’s cried in front of Beca once, and that was because she saw a video of a dog crying because his owners left him at the pound. Beca had told Chloe that the dog will probably get adopted and have a loving family soon since the tweet went viral, and Chloe had nodded and told her she was right.

She’s sure that Chloe has cried many times in her life, especially since she’s a vet and it’s a draining job, but Beca’s never witnessed this. Not until now.

Chloe’s the happy one in their friendship. Not that Beca isn’t happy, but Chloe’s the bubbly, outgoing, people-person, and Beca is just the friend. She’s 100% sure that people refer to them as ‘Chloe Beale and her friend’ because Beca doesn’t make it a hobby of hers to make a lasting impact on people.

Still, this is her best friend, and the woman that she’s in love with, and seeing her looking so sad and broken brings an ache to Beca’s chest that she’s only ever felt once before.

Chloe emerges from the bathroom in just the towel that Beca gave her, and while Chloe doesn’t have an issue with boundaries, Beca still looks away and waits for Chloe to get dressed before she starts up any type of conversation with her.

She only turns back around when she feels Chloe sit down on the bed next to her, and she slowly turns to see that Chloe is now dressed, but she still has tears in her eyes.

“Hey,” Beca whispers, placing a hand on Chloe’s thigh. Chloe turns to look at her and Beca smiles, and maybe the smile that Chloe gives her is out of habit because she’s still trembling a little, but it still makes Beca feel like this is okay. That this is what friends do for each other. “Do you, um-” she clears her throat. “Do you want to take my bed? I can sleep on the couch.”

Chloe turns to look at the bed, sniffing once before turning and looking back up at Beca through her lashes.

“Um,” she pauses, running a hand through her damp hair a few times. “Could you-can we…”

Beca’s not sure what prompts her - what gives her the courage - but she scoots closer to Chloe and she says “anything,” and doesn’t take her eyes off of Chloe’s face when Chloe looks down at the floor sadly.

“I just need you to hold me.” She lifts her head up, and Beca gives her a gentle smile because of course. Of course she’ll hold her. She’ll do anything for her.

It takes Beca another two hours after Chloe has fallen asleep - head resting in the dip of her neck - to finally get her breathing in check.

//

Chloe is still there when Beca wakes up, sitting up in bed while scrolling through her phone. It takes her a while to notice that Beca is awake, but when she does, she gives her a gentle smile and reaches over to the table beside Beca’s bed.

“Coffee,” Chloe whispers, holding a mug out for Beca as Beca turns onto her back and pulls herself up so she’s sitting against the headboard just like Chloe.

Her thanks comes in a gracious smile before she takes a sip, humming with squinted eyes as she tries to adjust to the light, and Chloe laughs at her.

“What?” Beca asks, one eye closed as she yawns.

“You look dreadful,” Chloe says. “But you’re so cute.”

Beca grumbles something that even _she’s_ not sure the meaning of, but her stomach is turning because of the way they are right now - both sitting against the headboard, Chloe looking through her phone and Beca looking at Chloe - it all feels so natural. Like they’re a couple. Like maybe they’re in love.

Chloe tells her that she should go though, and she thanks her for last night and apologizes for showing up uninvited. Before she can even get the full apology out, Beca is telling her that she has nothing to be sorry about and that’s what friends are for.

Because that’s what they are.

So that’s why Beca doesn’t freak out when Chloe kisses her on the cheek when she gives Chloe her birthday gifts. She doesn’t freak out when Chloe smiles at her and tells her “this is the best present ever, oh my god, I love you!” while pulling Beca in for a tight hug. She doesn’t freak out when Chloe turns around and asks her to put the necklace on her, and she doesn’t freak out when she hears Chloe’s breath hitch as her cold hands ghost over Chloe’s neck.

She doesn’t freak out.

(Except maybe she does.)

//

They spend a lot of time drunk together, which does nothing to keep Beca’s feelings at bay. She and Chloe both know that she gets both emotional and too friendly when she’s drunk, so she’s not sure why Chloe is always bringing wine and snacks around for a movie night that she never even agrees to.

But it’s Chloe and she can never say no. She should’ve known though, that it was only a matter of time before Chloe realized.

“Are you okay?” Chloe asks her, and if she had an excuse as to why she was staring at Chloe instead of the movie then she would’ve said it. But the reason was that she thinks Chloe is simply beautiful, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from her if she tried.

“What? Yeah, I’m fine.” She knows she’s lying. She’s lying because she’s drunk, and she’s never okay when she’s drunk. And she knows that she’s drunk because 1. her nose starts to feel weird. It feels numb, but itchy at the same time, and she knows it only feels that way when she’s maybe had a few too many to drink. “I’m perfect. Peachy. I’m, uh… I’m,” and 2. because she’s rambling. “I’m…”

“Beca–”

“–I’m s... I’m sorry.”

“What is it?”

“I feel like… I need to tell you–”

“–Bec. You’re worrying me.”

“I–I really like you. I’m sorry. That’s weird.”

  1. Because she’d never dream of doing that sober.



“Oh.” Chloe breathes out, and the tone of her voice shows she clearly wasn’t expecting that, and the pounding in Beca’s heart shows that she clearly wasn’t expecting to _say_ that, and Beca is on her feet in seconds, hands clenched as she quickly paces around the living room.

“Beca, what–”

“–I think I’m about to ruin my life.”

“What? I’m lost–I don’t…understand?”

Beca stops in her tracks, looking at Chloe. “I’m about to say something stupid that’s probably gonna… It’s probably gonna ruin us.”

“Then…” Chloe thinks for a second. Beca knows because she frowns, eyes squinted in confusion, and Beca knows that’s her thinking face. “Then don’t say it.”

“I have to.” When Chloe doesn’t say anything else, Beca’s stupid, drunk mind tells her now is a good idea to carry on talking.

“I never… I’ve never met anyone who truly, um,” she pauses again, scratching the tip of her nose as she averts her eyes. “God, this is harder than I thought it would be. I’ve never been good at...”

“Bec–”

“–I’ve never met someone like you, Chloe. Someone who actually likes– _believes_ in me. And who… wants to be around me… the way that you do.”

Chloe breathes out heavily, and Beca knows that if she looks into Chloe’s eyes all she’ll see is heartbreak and the reflection of her dumb self looking back at her, but she needs this moment more than anything because she’s not sure she’ll ever get the courage to say this again.

Plus, it’s kind of too late to take all of this back, as much as she’d love to.

“And... you made me believe in myself too,” she continues, ignoring the fact that she can see Chloe subtly wiping her eyes in her periphery. “And nobody has ever done that for me. So of course, I… Of course I fell for you, because you’re _you_. And I…”

“Beca, I–”

“–Just let me,” she huffs, looking up at the roof and closing her eyes, “say this. Let me have this, okay? I just…” she rolls her lips together and opens her eyes again. “The only person I’ve relied on my whole life is my dad. He was the only person I had. But… Um… But not in the way you’re there. For me.”

Beca shakes her hands in frustration because she’s not going to cry right now, no matter how much she wants to. She looks around the apartment. The entrance to her bedroom, the photos of her and Amy and Kenneth on the wall, the photo booth strip of her and Chloe on the fridge, the record player which had stopped on Side A of a James Bay vinyl, and the pair of her new headphones that lie on the other couch.

“I’ve never had someone who I can… Who I can come to when I’m stressed or just need a hug or someone who can just... rap the whole of Gangster’s Paradise at the drop of a hat.” Chloe lets out a soft, barely-there laugh at that, and Beca’s lip trembles because this may be the last time she ever hears Chloe laugh and it’s killing her but she’s tipsy and she’s doing this and she can’t stop now. “You’re so unique it’s like… It’s so strange. You’re _so_ strange. But you’re… like–okay, like the way you eat cereal with a fork because you think it gives you the perfect cereal to milk ratio so you can drink the milk afterwards. That makes no fucking sense to me but it’s so _you_ and I love that.”

Chloe shifts in her seat, and Beca’s head follows the noise and she sees that Chloe has a small, sad smile on her face.

“And–” she swallows. “And I don’t wanna live my life not knowing what we could be just because I’m scared. Because I _am_ . Scared. I’m fucking _terrified_. And you know I hate admitting that.”

She bites her lip, looking up at the ceiling again, this time to stop the tears from spilling, and she runs both hands through her hair and then makes the stupid decision to look at Chloe.

She’s crying.

“I don’t,” Beca’s voice quivers and she clears her throat, but she continues to look at Chloe. “I don’t want to regret not ever telling you that I’m _so_ in love with you. _So_ much. And it hurts me but makes me… it makes me feel alive and–and it makes me feel safe. All at the same time. You know? You ever feel that?”

Chloe’s eyes close and she quickly wipes her tears away as they stream down her face and Beca’s so close to breaking down in tears but she can’t. Not now. This is the one moment she needs to be strong and she’ll be damned if she lets her emotions get the better of her right now.

“I’m not… This isn’t _me_. I don’t make big speeches. I’m pretty sure this is the most I’ve ever spoke since we met but… You bring something out in me. I don’t know what,” she sucks in a breath, “the fuck it is but… You made me fall in love with life. And I’m not trying to sound all poetic and shit because life… It isn’t like that. People fight and they cry and people fall in love with people they can’t be with and... shit happens that we can’t control and I just,” she lets out a heavy sigh. “I want… I just… God, I want to experience life. I want to have all of that. With you.”

If the silence in the room wasn’t haunting in the few seconds before Beca’s big speech, it certainly is now. Because all she can hear is the movie still playing in the background and the pounding of her heart in her eardrums, and she’s not quite sure whether that _actually_ just happened or not.

“Beca, you’re my,” Chloe sniffs up, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hands. “You’re my _best_ friend. And...” Chloe opens her mouth to speak, and Beca watches as her chin wrinkles up as she tries to stop herself from crying any more tears and it’s killing Beca seeing her best friend like this, and it’s killing her even more knowing that the reason she’s crying is because of her.

“Beca–”

“–I’m not... saying you have to drop everything and be with me,” Beca whispers, defeated. She knows where this is going, so she might as well close it up. “I just… I want to be with you. And I know you… You’re still with Chicago. I know that. I know you love him but I’m in love with you, Chloe. And I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not… you don’t have to–”

“–Just tell me what you want,” she whispers, finally letting her tears fall freely down her face. “Tell me what to do, because... I,” she sucks in a breath, “don’t fucking _know_.”

“I need my _friend_.”

Beca clenches her jaw, nodding her head. “Friend,” she repeats, and then Chloe’s picking her jacket up off of the back of the couch and slipping her boots back on.

“I gotta go,” she whispers, picking up her purse and making her way to the door. “I’ll call you?”

All Beca can do is nod, defeated, as she watches Chloe leave her apartment, wondering why the _hell_ she just did that.

//

It only takes a few weeks for the two of them to go back to normal and for things to not be awkward between them. Beca certainly never expected things to go back to the way they were, but they did, and she doesn’t know whether to be happy or sad about it.

She’s kind of angry. But mostly she’s content. Chloe’s still in her life, and things seem okay. Not good, not bad, but okay.

The rest of the summer goes by really fast, and for some reason other things seem to be better in her life. Everything falls into place and things get a little hectic, but her and Chloe still stay close. Beca gets more gigs at a few city clubs that aren’t Tom’s, and Chloe cheers her on almost every single night. The only times Chloe doesn’t come is when she’s working early the next morning but even then, she texts Beca most of the night telling her that she’s proud of her and she’s sure she’s doing amazing.

She feels like everything in her life is going right, but the one thing that isn’t right is that Chloe is still with Chicago and Beca is still falling asleep thinking about anything she could’ve done different when she told Chloe how she felt.

She has no idea why Chloe had forgiven Chicago for leaving her at the airport but then again, Beca has no idea why Chloe does a lot of things. Like pours the milk before the cereal or has five sugars in her coffee or wakes up at 7:30AM every day.

Chloe’s a very confusing person, but the most confusing thing she’s done is forgive Chicago’s shitty excuses as to why he couldn’t pick his girlfriend up from the airport at midnight after not seeing her for a week.

Still though, she’s not going to judge. It’s been months and Chloe likes him so he can’t be that bad.

She meets - _meets_ is maybe the wrong word - Chicago for the second time in November before Chloe leaves to go home for thanksgiving. It’s a total accident, and not one that Beca would like to remember any time soon either.

She’d texted Chloe asking her if she wanted her to pick any food up before she came over for their usual TV/Movie night. Usually, before Beca’s outburst that night, their movie nights ended with them drunk, talking about everything and nothing, with the TV completely forgotten about, which Beca didn’t mind since she wasn’t a huge fan of movies in the first place. Especially the ones Chloe likes. ( _Clueless? Mean Girls?_ _Bring It On?_ Seriously? Come on.)

Ever since Beca told Chloe how she felt though, she made sure not to have any more than two glasses, in case she ended up doing or saying something stupid.

That night though when Beca tried getting in touch with her, Chloe hadn’t responded to any of the texts that Beca had sent.

 **Becs:** still on for tonight??

 **Becs:** Picking up some food, you want anything specific?

 **Becs:** I’m omw. U better be dead

 **Becs:** ok not dead, I don’t want that. But u better have an excuse for not texting me b/c I got you Thai and I don’t even know if you like Thai

She never really thought the first time she’d hear Chloe moaning, it’d be over the sound of Chicago’s grunting and a weirdly depressing indie record playing in the background. And if Beca didn’t have her earphones in, she would’ve heard the noises coming from the apartment before she opened it with the key that Chloe gave her a few weeks ago, and then she would’ve avoided the eyeful of a naked Chloe and her equally naked boyfriend going at it on the couch.

Beca had screamed - literally screamed “O-OH SHIT!” - and dropped the bag of food on the floor as she turned around so fast that her shoulder slammed into the doorway of Chloe’s apartment, her earphones dangling from her pocket and her eyes squeezed shut.

“Bec,” she heard Chloe say, and maybe it was the way that she sounded, so breathless - maybe that was confusion - and it was doing things to Beca’s brain that she really didn’t want to think about, but Beca couldn’t really take being there, near them both, any longer.

She was already blindly reaching out to slam the door behind her before Chloe had chance to say or do anything else.

The day after, when Chloe texts her to hang out as if that night hadn’t even happened, it throws her off a little. Just a little though, because this seems to be a thing they do now. Forget about the embarrassing stuff between them and go back to normal. Back to routine.

Still, Beca makes sure to never let herself into Chloe’s apartment without knocking at least four times ever again.

//

They spend the first day of December watching movies and drinking cheap wine from the store down the road.

Chloe cries at _The Notebook_ and _Titanic_ , and Beca tries her best not to scoff too much at the cheesy, cliché lines. They both curl up under a mountain of blankets, tangled limbs and the occasional sniffle from Chloe, and Beca tries to keep her breathing in check as she lets Chloe cling to her side. They fall asleep together and wake up with sore necks, but it’s nice. By December 19th, Beca’s watched more movies with Chloe than she has in her whole life.

And all this time they spend together is doing absolutely nothing to stop the ever-growing feelings that Beca has for Chloe, but of course, she does what she always does best. Pushes her feelings down and hopes to God they’ll pass soon.

They go shopping on the day before Christmas Eve Eve.

(“It’s a real thing, Bec! If Christmas can have an Eve then Christmas Eve should get an Eve. Christmas Eve _Eve_!”

“Doesn’t that mean the day before Christmas Eve Eve is Christmas Eve Eve Eve?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”)

Christmas shopping with Chloe Beale is almost as fun as doing practically everything else with Chloe Beale.

Beca’s used to shopping with her dad or Amy and despite their vast differences, they both hate shopping. Contrary to what people might think though, Beca likes it. Especially for other people; people she loves. She doesn’t get the chance to buy gifts for people often, since she doesn’t really have many friends, so she likes it when she gets to spend her money on something that isn’t groceries, CD’s and Vinyls, or the occasional video game.

Of course, she’ll never admit that to anybody.

When Chloe drags Beca to Victoria’s Secret and starts gushing over the Christmas outfits - they’re _lingerie_ , no matter what Chloe says about them being costumes - Beca forgets how to breathe for a few seconds. Chloe buys them. Of course she does. She also tries on some cute Christmas pajamas, and Beca almost drools when she comes out of the changing room, actually looking like a Victoria’s Secret model herself.

Nobody can really blame her for staring though. She has eyes. Her best friend is _beautiful_ , she can admit that, and her first thought when she sees a girl in shorts - shorts that may aswell be underwear - is obviously always gonna be ‘holy fucking _shit_ ’ so she doesn’t really think about it too much.

She definitely doesn’t think about how she’d love to see Chloe wearing that same outfit in their home, 5 years from now, a puppy or a kitten or whatever animal Chloe wants, asleep in front of the fire as they– _No_. She’s not thinking about it.

Chloe has Chicago and Beca is _fine_.

They buy some more decorations for Chloe’s apartment, threads of garland to put on the small tree that she has in the corner of the living room, and more garland for the fireplace, and more garland “just because”, and they buy ornaments and strings of lights in the shape of Santa hats and reindeer, and even a light up snowman to stick in the window.

They take a break from Christmas shopping to have a coffee, and it doesn’t surprise Beca when Chloe orders for her, because they’ve been out for coffee so much that they’ve practically memorized each other’s orders. It _does_ surprise her, however, when Chloe pays for her coffee and even buys them both a gingerbread man cookie to go with their drinks.

“Are these your long lost siblings?” Beca asks her.

“Shut up,” is all Chloe says, trying to suppress her smile, before leaning against the counter as they wait for their coffee.

Chloe’s hip is touching hers as they wait, and she doesn’t even realize that she’s wrapped her arm around her back, until she feels Chloe lean into her. It’s nice, Beca thinks. Really nice. It’s not awkward, and sure, Chloe is a little bit taller than her, so if anything, it should be the other way around. But Beca likes it, and she finds herself a little disappointed when their coffees are placed in front of them and Chloe picks them both up, pulling herself from Beca’s arms.

“Okay, so I’ve already given Aubrey her present,” Chloe says, handing Beca her coffee before they make their way out of the coffee shop, “and Stacie said she didn’t want anything but I saw this super cute shirt at H&M that she’ll like so I think I’m gonna get her that. I bought Amy and Jesse some chocolates for when they get back from seeing their families and–OH, and I heard that the sale in the record store is really good so we should go there because I need… Bec?”

Chloe slows down, stopping to turn around to look at Beca, who hadn’t realized that she had slowed down, and she hadn’t taken her eyes off of Chloe since they walked out of the coffee shop.

“You alright?” Chloe asks, smiling gently at her.

As usual, the smile gives Beca butterflies, and at this point, she’s so used to it that all she can do is just give in to the feeling.

Maybe it’s the way Chloe is looking at her. She looks concerned, as if she’s ready to fight whatever is worrying Beca - that makes her feel special, since Chloe hates violence - or maybe it’s because she’s never had someone look at her like that before; the Christmas lights in the mall lighting up Chloe’s eyes, as the two of them stand there in the middle of the hundreds of people rushing around for late Christmas presents.

That look. It’s as if Chloe…

No.

Chloe has Chicago and Beca is _fine_ , damn it.

“I’m good,” she nods, smiling at Chloe as she starts walking beside her again, “just thinking.”

When they get back to Chloe’s apartment, there’s a smile on Chloe’s face bigger than Beca has ever seen before. They both have bags full of presents and decorations, and even some food for their own little Christmas dinner that Chloe says she’ll be making for them, and it takes a second for Beca to remember that this is Chloe’s home. Not hers.

Not theirs.

//

She spends Christmas day with her dad and Sheila and she definitely doesn’t wait all day for Chloe’s promised facetime call.

It’s not healthy, she knows it isn’t, but Chloe is pretty much her only source of happiness other than her music, and there’s nothing wrong with being excited to talk to your best friend, right?

Her dad buys her a few vinyls and a pair of ridiculously expensive headphones that she really should say “I can’t accept these” to, but she’s been using cheap, shitty ones for so long now that she actually gets excited when she opens them and tells him that she loves them. She even gives him a hug, which is only a little awkward but mostly warm.

Sheila gives her a $100 Sam Ash voucher and she accepts it with a smile and an awkward side hug, and then has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom due to being too sincere and serious for way too long.

She wonders whether Chloe’s having a good Christmas. She knows that she’s with her dads and she’ll be visiting her extended family while she’s in Miami, and she’s due to land back in New York on the 27th, but she hasn’t spoke to her since the day before yesterday when Chloe landed in Florida.

She’s about to text Chloe when she feels her phone vibrate on the counter next to the sink, and she instantly smiles when she sees the message preview.

 **Beale:** MERRY CHRISTMAS BECS!  <3 Hope you have the bestest day ever, get the BEST presents and eat LOTS of Christmas dinner!!!xo And don’t get too drunk! I’ll facetime you later so you can show me what you got!! My dads say hello and happy holidays! Love you xoxoxo <3 <3

Beca shakes her head with a laugh, sitting on the edge of the bathtub as she types out her reply.

 **Becs:** all that right back atcha, red. don’t forget about me while you’re living it up with your fancy relatives.

 **Beale:** I would NEVER :O you’re pretty unforgettable Beca with one C

 **Becs:** seriously? still calling me that, huh?

 **Beale:** YEP!

 **Beale:** It’s cute! Whatcha doing?!?!

 **Becs:** just finished opening presents. think sheila’s gonna make me help with dinner while my dad tries and fails to put the fire on -_-

 **Beale:** Awww, stepmother-stepdaughter bonding time! Tell them I said Merry Christmas!!

 **Becs:** Gross. I’d rather be working

 **Beale:** No you wouldn’t! :P

 **Becs:** ugh.

 **Beale:** CHEER UP BECS IT’S CHRISTMAAAAS

Beca laughs, sending a straight-faced emoji before putting her phone back into her back pocket and going back downstairs.

//

Chloe calls her the day after Christmas at around 9PM, when Beca, her dad, and Sheila are watching a dumb Christmas movie that Beca was falling asleep to. Watching movies without Chloe is boring, since she doesn’t have anybody to listen to them singing along to the songs, or anybody to voice her complaints to throughout. She would complain to her dad and Sheila, but every time she speaks up theys shush her, telling her “this is the best part!” no matter what part they’re watching.

The vibration in her pocket wakes her up though, and she excuses herself to take the call, stepping outside into the brisk Brooklyn air.

“Hello?”

**_“BECA!”_ **

Beca pulls the phone away, cringing at how loud Chloe yells her name, but she smiles nonetheless. She’s always happy to hear Chloe’s voice, even if it’s yelled above the sound of loud music and people chatting in the background.

“Hey.”

 **_“Hi!”_ ** She can practically hear the grin in Chloe’s voice. **_“Wh’you doing?”_ **

“Watching Polar Bear Express or some shit with dad and Sheila.”

**_“You mean The Polar Express?”_ **

“Yeah. Whatever.”

**_“I can’t believe you’re watching a Christmas movie!”_ **

“ _Shocking_ , I know.”

She hears Chloe laugh, and then the sound of people in the background gets quieter until eventually all Beca can hear is Chloe breathing heavily into the phone.

“Chlo? You good?”

 **_“Mmmhm.”_ ** Her mouth is really close to the microphone because Beca can hear practically every breath and the way her lips part and it’s doing things to Beca that she really shouldn’t be thinking about right now.

“Are you feeling okay?” she asks, trying to stop her scumbag brain from having weird thoughts about her best friend. “Are you drunk?”

**_“No!”_ **

If Beca wasn’t focusing on her own breathing right now, she’d probably laugh at the defensive but playful tone in Chloe’s voice. Instead, she switches her phone to her other ear as she looks inside to see that her dad and Sheila are still focused on the movie playing on the TV.

“Prove it.”

She hears Chloe let out another breath. **_“Mmkay, Whadda ya want me to do?”_ **

“Say five true sentences to me”

 **_“Okay. I am not drunk. Chloe…”_ ** she pauses to hiccup. **_“is my name. Gal Gadot is bae. I’m sober.”_ **

“That’s four.”

**_“Okay is a full sentence.”_ **

“You’re wasted.”

 **_“Mmmkay, I may be slightly tipsy.”_ ** Beca laughs out loud with a shake of her head. **_“How did you know? You’re a good detective. You should be a detective. Sherlock Holmes. Beca Holmes.”_ **

Beca laughs again. “I’ve been drunk with you before, Chlo. Your voice gets all hoarse and you do-”

**_“I’m a horse?”_ **

“No, no, Chloe. You’re not a horse. H-O-A-R-S-E,” she spells out. “You know... Deep. Rough.”

Chloe hums, and Beca holds her breath, waiting in anticipation for what Chloe will say next. Because Chloe has a habit of saying things - mostly complementing Beca - when she’s drunk, and she never seems to remember when she’s sober. Either that or she remembers and she’s just too embarrassed to ever bring it up again.

So Beca waits in silence until she hears a small bang, and she looks around nervously.

“Chlo? You still there?”

 **_“Yeah,”_ ** Chloe rasps. **_“Hit my head.”_ **

“Are you okay?”

**_“Mmhm.”_ **

“Where are you?”

**_“Florida.”_ **

“No, I know,” There’s a deepness to Chloe’s voice that Beca’s never heard before and her heart is pounding, even though Chloe has only said a few words to her. “I mean where are you right now? Are you in your house?”

**_“Party... bathroom.”_ **

Beca hums. “Did you, uh... need anything?”

**_“I miss you.”_ **

She swallows thickly, kicking her toe on the ground. “ _Oh_.” The grip on her phone is so tight that she’s afraid it’ll break. “I miss you too, loser.”

**_“I miss you a lot, Becs.”_ **

The sound of her name coming out of Chloe’s mouth in that tone sends a jolt of something through her whole body, and Beca’s not quite sure she knows what it is.

Or she thinks she doesn’t know what it is. Maybe she just doesn’t want to think about what it is.

In reality, she knows that the only time she ever feels this excited - this _worked up_ \- is when she’s in the confines of her own bedroom, door locked, blanket over her lap, eyes squeezed shut with a soft but intense spotify playlist playing in the background.

She knows exactly what she’s feeling but Chloe is her best friend, and she refuses to be _that_ person who thinks _those_ thoughts about somebody who she has a purely platonic relationship with.

“Chloe-”

**_“-I wish you were here with me.”_ **

She curses under her breath, a soft “fuck” as she looks up at the dark sky and tries to focus on her _own_ breathing and not Chloe’s. But to make it worse, Chloe lets out a whimper that does nothing to subdue the butterflies in Beca’s stomach and the _ache_ she’s suddenly feeling all at once.

She looks around for something- _anything_ to distract herself. She’s not sure what she’s looking for. Maybe she’s dreaming and she’ll suddenly see something that scares her and wakes her up.

Though she’s not quite sure if anything scares her as much as a drunk Chloe Beale, voice rough and out-of-breath, telling her that she misses her and wishes she was there with her.

There’s silence on both sides of the call besides both of their breathing, and Beca is about to ask if Chloe is still there again when she hears Chloe tell her she has to go. She doesn’t give her a chance to say goodbye before the phone beeps and she’s gone.

//

That phone call is all Beca can think about for the rest of the night and half of the next day. It keeps her up, the sound of Chloe’s heavy breathing and the sounds she was making, as if she was- _No_ . She wasn’t doing anything. She was calling her friend to tell her she missed her and that’s _it_.

She thinks about it until she picks Chloe up from the airport that afternoon. Chloe runs into her arms and hugs her, planting six kisses on her cheek as she tells her that she missed her and she wants to hear _all_ about her holidays.

So they’re forgetting about the phone call. Beca can do that. She’s a pro at this. She’s the best at avoiding topics and ignoring her thoughts telling her to talk about these things. If bottling up her feelings was a sport, she’d have a whole room in her apartment dedicated to all the medals, plaques and trophies she’s won.

This’ll be a piece of cake.

(It’s not.)

//

Chloe drags Beca to a karaoke bar on New Year’s Eve.

It’s definitely not how Beca wanted to spend the New Year, since she absolutely can’t stand karaoke, but Chloe had told her that she’d had a terrible few days and she’d really love if she came along with her, and saying no to Chloe Beale is the one thing that Beca finds it impossible to do. So she tells Chloe that she’ll go if she buys her a drink, and Chloe agrees with a million smiley face emoji’s and a promise to stop by her apartment at 8 so they can walk there together.

Beca’s never heard of the bar they go to, but Chloe swears by it and says they have the best deals on drinks, and Beca’s not going to turn down an opportunity to save money on alcohol.

Chloe buys her a cocktail that Beca can’t remember the name of, and it’s not long before the one cocktail turns into three, and Beca’s drunk, watching Chloe yell over the music at two other women who Beca’s pretty sure are supermodels.

“Beca!” She puts her drink down just as Chloe crashes into her side, hugging her and introducing her to her friends. “This is Aubrey and Stacie! Guys, this is Beca with one C! You finally meet!”

Beca laughs, nodding her head at the two women who look equally as drunk and carefree as Chloe does right now, and she finally relaxes into Chloe’s embrace when the four of them start to chat aimlessly over the sound of somebody’s drunk rendition of _Fleetwood Mac_ ’s You Make Loving Fun.

“Can you believe New Rules isn’t in the karaoke book?” Chloe suddenly comes out of nowhere and asks Beca when she’s talking to Stacie. There’s a completely serious frown on Chloe’s face that makes Beca smile immediately because of _course_ , Chloe would be upset that they don’t have one of her favorite songs at the moment in the book. “I guess I’m just gonna have to pick another song and sing the lyrics to New Rules.”

True to her word, Chloe picks Cheap Thrills by Sia and sings the words to New Rules. It fits oddly well, and Beca’s not surprised that Chloe makes it sound amazing, especially when she gets distracted and starts singing the correct words. It makes the song even better, and Beca makes a note on her phone to remember mix the two songs for Chloe tomorrow.

She gets the most applause out of everyone at the end of the song, and she bounces over to Beca with a huge grin on her face, asking “was that good?! Did I do good?!” All Beca can do is nod and laugh and accept the side-hug that Chloe pulls her into, and her heart aches in all the right places.

//

It’s only 11:30PM when Chloe says goodbye to Aubrey and Stacie and drags Beca out of the karaoke bar. She fully expects them to get into a cab and head back to one of their apartments, but she’s surprised when Chloe takes them to a park down the street instead.

They sit in silence for a while as they sit on the swings, and Beca’s ready to ask Chloe if she’s okay when she hears Chloe whisper something. But she’s never been good at listening when she’s drunk, so she looks over at Chloe to see that she’s looking down sadly at the ground.

“What?”

“I broke up with Chicago.”

Beca half nods, opening her mouth to say “oh,” but nothing comes out. She watches as Chloe scuffs her heels into the ground beneath them, and she swallows.

“Is that why you wanted to come out tonight?”

“Sorta.”

“Is there… a reason you broke up with him?”

“I just… I don’t love him.”

Beca’s never really known what to say to people when they go through a breakup. Mostly because the only people she’s actually seen go through breakups are Amy and Jesse. Amy usually just gets drunk and forgets about whoever it is she broke up with, and Jesse just pretends that the night his girlfriend kissed Beca never happened.

Beca’s had it easy. Breakups have never been a big part of her life. But seeing Chloe in this park, looking so vulnerable over what she’d just told Beca, it really puts a damper on her mood. Especially since there’s nothing she can think of to tell Chloe to make her feel better, and she really hates a sad Chloe Beale.

“He told me he never loved me.”

Her head snaps up, looking at Chloe to see that she’s now looking up at the sky with tears in her eyes.

“He what?”

She lets out a laugh, but Beca can tell that it’s forced and bitter and it breaks her heart, seeing the woman she loves almost in tears over some douchebag who Beca’s never liked. And not because he was dating the love of her life, but because Chloe is way too good for him.

Chloe’s way too good for anybody.

“He got angry at me when I told him there was,” she pauses, clearing her throat. “He said that… that night he left me at the airport. He was with somebody else.”

“What an _asshole_.”

“I’m pretty sure he said it out of anger.”

“Don’t defend him. You need me to fight him?” Part of Beca is completely serious, part of her knows that no matter how mean her left hook is, she’s never going to fight somebody built like Chicago and make it out alive. She manages to make Chloe smile though, which Beca counts as a mini victory. “I can totally fight him, just say the word and I’ll do it.”

Chloe shakes her head, wiping under her eyes. “No offense Becs but I feel like a mouse just threatened to fight a lion.”

“ _Wow_. Words hurt, Beale.”

Chloe giggles at that, and Beca smiles, standing up off of the swing. She wobbles a little but she manages to keep her balance, holding her hand out for Chloe to take.

“What are you doing?” Chloe asks, and Beca smiles.

“I don’t know much about breakups but I think they require movies and a shit ton of junk food?”

When Chloe smiles up at her, wiping another tear away as she stands up, Beca can’t help but lean in, standing on her tiptoes to place a kiss on Chloe’s cheek.

It’s maybe the best New Year’s kiss she’s ever had.

//

They spend a lot of time together over the next couple of months watching TV shows or movies and getting drunk. Chloe works a lot and she has crazy hours but most of the time she comes home to Beca, and Beca already has either a glass of wine or a mug of hot chocolate poured for her.

Valentine’s Day is spent together on Beca’s couch, watching a romcom movie that Beca stops taking notice of fifteen minutes in. It’s pretty hard to focus when the two of them are a bottle of wine in already, and Beca already feels her head buzzing from drinking on an empty stomach.

Halfway through the movie, she stumbles into the kitchen to make her and Chloe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich - Chloe says she doesn’t want one but Beca insists she makes the best PB&J sandwiches in existence, which isn’t far from the truth - and she returns with two glasses of wine in her right hand and two plates balancing on her left arm.

“Oh my God Bec, you’re gonna fall.”

She shakes her head no, mumbling “m’fine” as she focuses on walking in a straight line to the couch where Chloe is sitting. She hears Kenneth meow from where he’s sitting on the arm of the couch beside Chloe, and she glares at him, almost losing her balance momentarily.

“Look, you’re gonna end up falling and–“

“–I can’t even _see_ , never mind fall!”

Chloe lets out a soft laugh, accepting the plate and wine glass from Beca with a gracious smile, and trying not to let her wine spill when Beca throws herself down onto the couch with no warning.

“Hey Chlo?”

Chloe hums, taking a bite of her sandwich, and Beca adjusts herself so she’s sitting upright, one leg underneath her and the other hanging off the couch. ““What… what do they put in alcohol that makes it-makes me do this?” she looks at Chloe, a drunk, questioning frown on her face. “What is that? Like if I-I will _die_ if I drink more of that wine. Ya know?”

“Oh my God,” Chloe says around her food, pausing to swallow. “Eat your sandwich, you weirdo.”

“I can’t.” She picks the sandwich up, looking at it before looking back up at Chloe.

“Why?”

“I can’t physically eat it.”

Chloe giggles again. “Why?”

“I can’t find it.”

“It’s _literally_ in your hand.”

“I know but I have to get it from my hand to my mouth and,” she hiccups, “I can’t handle that responsibility.”

She can tell Chloe’s trying not to laugh, because she’s biting her lip and it shouldn’t make Beca blush because it’s an innocent gesture, but she still looks away - looks down at her sandwich - and tries to focus on her own breathing.

Except maybe she should try to focus on actually eating properly instead, because she tries to take a bite but she completely misses her mouth, smearing the peanut butter and jelly over her mouth and cheek.

She doesn’t know why she looks up at Chloe for help, but she immediately smiles when she sees the corners of Chloe's lips curl up involuntarily, and she can tell she’s biting the insides of her mouth to stop from laughing, but it’s no use. She bursts out laughing anyway, the sweet sound of it echoing around Beca’s apartment, and Beca can’t help but grin.

“Has anyone ever told you that you're laugh is the _cutest_ fucking thing?” Beca asks, and Chloe giggles sweetly again.

“Shut up.”

“I’m serious!” Beca’s always had a knack for saying things - _honest_ things - when she’s drunk, so she doesn’t really think much of it when she starts to ramble. It certainly isn’t the first time. “Your laugh, dude,” she says, and she can still feel the contents of her sandwich smudged across her face but she doesn’t care. “It’s the _best_ thing. And what the shit, you’re so pretty. Your eyes do this thing like… bam! and your lips are like pow! kaaboom! I just want to look at it-look at your face forever. I want to paint it and hang it on my wall."

Chloe shakes her head with a soft smile, getting up from where she’s sitting opposite Beca on the couch to go into the kitchen. Beca thinks maybe she’s done something wrong, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it before Chloe is back, sitting way too close to Beca than she should be.

“What-”

She widens her eyes when she feels Chloe’s hand on the back of her neck, and for a split second she thinks that Chloe is going to kiss her, right here in her living room at 10:47PM on Valentine’s Day.

But then Chloe’s holding a wet towel up to her face, and she’s wiping the peanut butter and jelly off of Beca’s cheek and mouth, mumbling that she’s maybe had enough to drink but Beca’s not paying attention.

She thinks she whispers back something about there being three of Chloe, but somehow Beca’s hand had ended up resting on Chloe’s thigh and even though Chloe has a pair of Beca’s sweatpants on, Beca still feels the burn of Chloe’s warm skin under her fingers.

Whatever she’d said, it makes Chloe laugh, and then she’s putting her hand over the hand that Beca has resting on her thigh, lowering the other hand that has the wet towel in it. Beca looks down at their hands, and turns hers over, entwining her fingers with Chloe, and it feels so perfect that Beca thinks maybe they were made for this.

“Bec?”

Maybe they were made for each other.

“Hmm?” She can’t help the way she stares at Chloe either - even if there are three of her and she doesn’t know which one is the real Chloe - and she certainly can’t help the way her eyes fall a few inches down to look at Chloe’s lips.

“You’re… Did you mean that?”

“What?”

“What you just said,” Beca watches the way Chloe’s eyes flicker to her lips for a split second, and she feels like she can’t breathe. “About my eyes and… my face.”

Beca swallows, her heart pounding in her chest at how close they are sitting. She’s pretty sure her hand is sweating but Chloe is still holding onto it and it doesn’t seem like she’s letting go anytime soon.

So she nods. And she says, “Chlo,” and she pauses because she’s fucking terrified of saying the wrong thing right now. Terrified that one wrong move will ruin them, send them back to that night Beca told Chloe how she felt. And God, she doesn’t want that.

But Chloe’s eyes are pleading with her for something - something she’s not sure she can even give - and Beca can smell Chloe’s perfume and she can count each freckle on her face because they’re so close to each other, and she sighs.

“You’re _so_ beautiful.”

“Bec-”

“-You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”

A soft breath escapes Chloe’s parted lips, and Beca’s fully aware that she’s openly staring at them but she can’t seem to stop. They’re like a magnet, pulling her in and moving her closer and she’s not sure if she’s actually moving or if that’s the alcohol but Chloe’s face is so close to hers that everything is just a big blur.

“I’m such an idiot.”

Beca’s eyes are just about to drift shut but she opens them, pulling back slightly to see Chloe, eyes cast down, looking like somebody had just told her the worst news of her life.

And Beca’s confused because she thinks maybe Chloe called herself an idiot or maybe she called her an idiot or maybe-Chloe looks up at her, and Beca gulps, immediately noticing the tears in Chloe’s eyes.

“What’s… are you okay?”

Chloe squeezes her hand, shakes her head, and lets out a heavy breath.

“You still love me.” Beca opens her mouth to respond, but Chloe looks down at her mouth again, and all Beca can do is sigh. “You’re in love with me.”

She doesn’t want to go through this again. It hurt enough the first time, when Chloe told her through her tears that they’re _friends_ , and left Beca alone in her apartment. She really wants to say something, but Chloe is still close - still pressed against her and holding her hand - and if she’s honest she’s not quite sure _what_ to say. Because Chloe’s right. Of _course_ Chloe’s right. There was never a time in the past few months that Beca had thought about _not_ being in love with Chloe.

Loving Chloe came as natural as making music. Hell, it came as natural as breathing. It’s one of the few things in her life that she’s 100% certain about. She may not know where she wants to be with her career in 10 years, and she may not know whether she wants to stay in New York or pursue a music career in L.A, and she may not know whether Ken actually likes her for _her_ or for the treats she buys him. But God, she knows without a doubt that she’s in love with Chloe Beale.

So she manages a nod but she’s still not sure what to say. Whether she should push Chloe away and tell her that she can’t continue being her friend, or whether she should bite the bullet and pull her close and tell her that she is and always will be in love with her.

“Tell me, Becs.”

Beca blinks a few times, and Chloe is still looking at her expectantly, waiting with baited breath.

Beca only says it because she’s pretty sure Chloe’s gonna suffocate herself if she doesn’t.

“I’m in love with you.”

“You mean that.”

“I do.”

Chloe nods, and Beca watches as her throat bobs when she swallows. As much as Beca would like to stand up and start pacing again, there’s something keeping her where she is. Maybe it’s the fact that Chloe still hasn’t let go of her hand, or maybe it’s because she can feel Chloe’s other hand stroking up her arm and the only thing she can focus on is the thudding of her heart in her chest because Chloe’s never touched her like this before. Never looked at her like this before.

“Bec?”

“Mmhm.”

“Can I kiss you?”

Maybe it’s the alcohol or maybe it’s Chloe’s effect on her, but Beca’s eyes are already closing by the time she manages to whisper out “please” and then Chloe’s lips are on hers.

The movies she’s been watching with Chloe make first kisses with the person you’re in love with seem so big. Makes them seem like there should be fireworks or explosions but all Beca feels is a sort of calm wash over her that she’s never felt before.

She feels like she’s floating. Like everything around her disappears and it’s just her and Chloe, and the kiss is so soft and gentle that Beca’s not sure whether she’s imagining it or not. She’s not sure whether this is a dream, and she’s going to wake up and Chloe will be sitting at the other end of the couch like usual, taking pictures of her sleeping and teasing her about being adorable.

It takes her a few seconds longer than usual to kiss Chloe back, and the feeling of Chloe’s mouth moving against her own, head occasionally switching sides as she gently pushes, feels like maybe the best thing Beca’s ever experienced.

“I’m sorry,” Chloe whispers into her mouth, and Beca furrows her brow as she pushes closer, her forehead resting against Chloe’s as the kiss deepens a little. “I’m so-”

“-Stop talking.”

Her brain finally kicks in and she brings one hand up to cup Chloe’s face, and Chloe sighs into her mouth as the two of them try to bring each other closer. They’re still holding hands and Chloe’s other hand is resting on her shoulder, and she lets out an involuntary shiver when Chloe’s fingers ghost past her collarbone and over her neck, until she’s threading her hands through Beca’s hair.

“Bec,” Chloe murmurs, and Beca’s tongue swipes over Chloe’s lip, bringing out a soft sound similar to the one Beca heard on the phone a couple of months ago. The memory of it sends a shiver down her spine and a jolt of pleasure through her body, and she doesn’t realize she’s pulling Chloe fully on top of her until Chloe whispers something into her mouth.

She pulls back slightly, but still stays close enough to feel Chloe’s breath on her lips, and she looks up at Chloe, confused.

“Just… Wait a sec.”

“Are you okay?”

“I just need to catch my breath.”

Beca smiles gently, caressing Chloe’s cheek as Chloe closes her eyes and rests her forehead against Beca’s.

“This is a stupid question but does this,” Beca pauses, taking in a sharp breath of air when she feels Chloe’s cold hand press against her hip where her shirt had ridden up.

“Are you okay?” Chloe asks, pulling her head back to see what had caused Beca to gasp.

“I’m good. Fine.” She tucks a piece of Chloe’s hair behind her ear, and something tugs at her heart strings when she watches the way Chloe smiles gently at her. Like she’s looking at something special. Like maybe…

“I’m in love with you.”

“Shut up.”

Chloe’s smile drops. “Bec-”

“-Don’t say that,” Beca whispers, shaking her head. “Please, Chloe, don’t say that if you don’t mean it because I don’t think I can handle-”

Maybe being cut off by Chloe’s lips is Beca’s new favorite thing. Maybe it’s another thing Beca’s going to add to her ever growing list of ‘reasons I love Chloe Beale’ but not right now.

“I love you, Beca. I promise, I love you.”

Right now, she’s going to carry on kissing Chloe until the two of them get bored.

(Beca hopes that’s never.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u very much for reading. i would rly appreciate if you left some feedback bc i really enjoyed writing this and i wanna know what u guys think. also u can follow me on tumblr @ chloebeale if you don't already. i'm always happy to talk about my au's/bechloe/pitch perfect in general


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